There has been a great improvement in the physical condition of the people of the United States within two generations. This is more noticeable in the West than in the East, but it is marked everywhere; and the foreign traveler who once detected a race deterioration, which he attributed to a dry and stimulating atmosphere and to a feverish anxiety, which was evident in all classes, for a rapid change of condition, finds very little now to sustain... more...

THE NEW IDEAL IN EDUCATION. By Father Nicholai Velimirovic, Ph.D. "Nature takes sufficient careof our individualistic sense,leaving to Education the careof our panhumanistic sense." Ladies and Gentlemen, If we do not want war we must look to the children. There is the only hope and the only wise starting point. It is not without a deep prophetic significance that Christ asked children to come unto Him. In all the world-calamities, in all... more...

THE EDUCATION OF THE CHILD Goethe showed long ago in his Werther a clear understanding of the significance of individualistic and psychological training, an appreciation which will mark the century of the child. In this work he shows how the future power of will lies hidden in the characteristics of the child, and how along with every fault of the child an uncorrupted germ capable of producing good is enclosed. "Always," he says, "I repeat the... more...

f thou wilt harken vnto me, or rather to Chrisippus, the sharpeste witted of Philosophers, yu shalte prouide yt thyne infante and yonge babe be forthewyth instructed in good learnyng, whylest hys wyt is yet voyde from tares and vices, whilest his age is tender and tractable, and his mind flexible and ready to folowe euery thyng, and also wyl kepe fast good lessons and preceptes. For we remẽber nothynge so well when we be olde, as those... more...

FLOURISHING MEDIOCRITY Humanity is rapidly becoming less the outcome of a natural process of development, and more and more the product of an organized educational plan. The average educated man possesses no real individuality. He is simply a manufactured article bearing the stamp of the maker. Year by year this fact is becoming more emphasized. During the past century almost every civilized country applied itself feverishly to the invention of... more...

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION—THE PRESENT UNREST IN EDUCATION The problems as to the end or ends at which our educational agencies should aim in the training and instruction of the children of the nation, and of the right methods of attaining these ends once they have been definitely and clearly recognised, are at the present day receiving greater and greater attention not only from professed educationalists, but also from statesmen and the... more...

The Child and the Curriculum Profound differences in theory are never gratuitous or invented. They grow out of conflicting elements in a genuine problem—a problem which is genuine just because the elements, taken as they stand, are conflicting. Any significant problem involves conditions that for the moment contradict each other. Solution comes only by getting away from the meaning of terms that is already fixed upon and coming to see... more...

HOW THE CHILD DEVELOPS Condition at Birth Let us see, then, exactly what his condition is. In the first place, he is, as Virchow, an authority on physiological subjects declares, merely a spinal animal. Some of the higher brain centers do not yet exist at all, while others are in too incomplete a state for service. The various sensations which the baby experiences—heat, light, contact, motion, etc.—are so many stimuli to the... more...

A SURVEY OF THE CHILD'S LIFE   The general laws which govern the child's psychical health have their parallel in those of its physical health.—Many persons who have asked me to continue my methods of education for very young children on lines that would make them suitable for those over seven years of age, have expressed a doubt whether this would be possible. The difficulties they put forward are mainly of a moral order. Should... more...

CHAPTER I IN MEDIAS RES I am rather glad now that I took a little dip (one could scarce call it a baptism) into the Latin, and especially into Horace, for that good soul gave me the expression in medias res. That is a forceful expression, right to the heart of things, and applies equally well to the writing of a composition or the eating of a watermelon. Those who have crossed the Channel, from Folkstone to Boulogne, know that the stanch little... more...