basis on which he built his scale. The large numbers that form such an important element in the American schemes are lacking. By multiplying the number of experimenters and of children experimented upon we cannot wholly eliminate error, but the plain teacher certainly shows a distinct preference for investigations that have a very wide basis. He may not be aware that experimenters fall into two opposing camps on this matter of numbers versus technical skill in experimenting; but even if he did, he would no doubt remain true to his faith in numbers. This belief in the quantitative is widespread, and becomes strengthened if the quantities can be represented by mathematical formulæ.

The longing of the new teaching for objective standards finds a notable satisfaction in the various correlation formulæ that enable teachers to establish, with all the authority of mathematics at their back, comparisons between different school subjects, and between the methods of teaching them. Even the plain teacher can apply Spearman's "foot-rule," though he might be sore put to it if called upon to justify its claims to be regarded as authoritative. It cannot be denied that there is a certain danger in using formulæ of this kind, for plain people are very apt to regard as final and irrefragable whatever can be reduced to mathematical symbols. It is sometimes forgotten that the material that is handed over to the mathematician must be supplied by human intelligence, with all its possibilities of error. No doubt the formulæ do their work honestly, and grind out results

1 British Journal of Psychology, vol. ii. p. 89. The subject is very simply and clearly treated in C. W. Valentine's Introduction to Experimental Psychology, p. 134 ff.

that are true for the material supplied; but the material itself needs to be tested. In the ultimate resort we cannot eliminate the human element. "Personal impression" may be reduced to its minimum, but we can never entirely rid ourselves of it. All the same, the correlation formulæ have introduced a process that is of the utmost service in settling points of debate. Given certain data we can rely upon the results. The state of mind produced by this certainty induces a new attitude to school problems, and imparts to the new teaching a tone that clearly marks it off from the old.

Hitherto we have been dealing with aspects of the new teaching that on the whole are favourably regarded by the great body of the profession. Now it is necessary to face a charge very commonly made that recent tendencies are in favour of what is contemptuously called a "soft pedagogy." Many teachers are almost morbidly sensitive on the subject of making work too easy for their pupils. All this special consideration for the individual pupil, this clearing away of difficulties and misunderstandings, this recognition of the claims of every member of a school class, all tend, we are told, to effeminacy. Some of the stalwarts of the profession are inclined to think that the new teaching has a tendency to coddle the pupils, to remove all incentive to effort, to provide for them a "primrose path." But there is really no danger. The "royal road is as unattainable to-day as it was when the hoary proverb was in its first youth. There will always be plenty of difficulties to brace up our pupils. Surely there is no need to supply artificial obstacles after the manner of those who arrange steeplechases and golf courses, or even deliberately to retain diffi

culties that at present exist. The maintenance of our absurd weights and measures has been over and over again supported, apparently in all seriousness, on the ground of the excellent training involved in struggles with such troublesome items as 5 and 301. When all artificial difficulties have been removed, there will always remain an irreducible surd of troublesome elements that will give full exercise to all the energy and determination available among our pupils. When the young people have been taught to study, and thus to avoid waste of effort, there will always remain the great mass of legitimate difficulties that no man can remove. If bunkers and hazards did not exist in our school course we might have to follow Voltaire's suggestion about God, and invent them; but of difficulties in learning there will never be a lack.

The place given in the new teaching to interest is always a source of suspicion among the old guard of teachers. They ask: "Why should teaching be made interesting? The world, they say, is not so arranged that everything is made interesting for people, and therefore it is better that the schools should accustom youngsters to face the uninteresting, so that when they go out into the world they may not be unprepared for the troubles that lie before them. But this statement about the world is not quite accurate. Only people who are prepared for suicide have any right to say that the world is uninteresting. People may, if they like, say that it is unpleasant; but that is a totally different thing. In the world, no doubt, we have to do a great

1 The spirit of the new teaching, on the other hand, finds expression throughout the new Cambridge Essays on Education in a persistent demand that pupils must be interested in their work and encouraged to enjoy it.

many things in which we find no interest; but this does not prove that our lives are uninteresting. Precisely the same thing holds in school. In order to gratify our interests we have to undertake a great deal of what is correctly called drudgery. The new teaching does not seek to eliminate drudgery, nor to make everything interesting in itself. Its aim is to give a meaning to the whole of school learningto supply an answer to the question that lies at the back of the mind of all intelligent pupils, and must be suggested to the mind of those less gifted: "What is it all about?" The new teaching does not seek to free the pupils from effort, but to encourage them to strenuous work; does not seek to get rid of drudgery, but to make it tolerable by giving it a meaning and showing its relation to the whole learning process in school, and to the whole process of living in the world.

CHAPTER II

ENGLISH

BY THE EDITOR

PERHAPS the most characteristic feature of the new teaching of English is the recognition that the Direct Method is as essential in dealing with the mother tongue as it is in dealing with foreign languages. Speaking broadly, there are three stages in the history of the treatment of English in our schools. (i) At first the mother tongue was not taught at all. It was taken for granted that when a pupil came to school he could speak English sufficiently to communicate easily with his teachers and with his fellows. But no attempt was made to increase his knowledge of his own language. Indeed, the tendency was after a time rather the other way. Restrictions were placed upon his use of the mother tongue lest Latin should suffer. (ii) By and by it was perceived that in order to expound the niceties of the Classics it was necessary for the pupil to have a more critical knowledge of his own language. Accordingly, a certain amount of attention began to be given to English as a sort of auxiliary. As time went on, the claims of English to a firsthand treatment began to be generally recognized. But the resulting methods were dominated by those that already held the field in Latin and Greek. The mother tongue was taught grammatically, after the analogy of a language