The object of dividing subjects into general foundational, quasi-vocational, and vocational groups is obvious. Vocational courses, if admitted to the college curriculum under any circumstances, should ordinarily be allowed to occupy but a small part of the student's time, and that practically only in the senior year. Two good reasons may be given for this conviction. In the first place the colleges as a rule have neither the teaching force nor the library and laboratory facilities for specific and detailed vocational courses; secondly, the introduction of such courses to any great extent is simply an attempt to build the superstructure of vocational training before the foundations have been laid; the more such courses are admitted to the curriculum the less room remains for those prime essentials, courses which lay the foundations both for vocation and for that larger efficiency which may be called social citizenship. The quasi-vocational group, on the other hand, may be given a large place in the last two years of the college. If this be done it virtually means the establishment of the group system in some form, either upon a compulsory basis, or upon the basis of an intelligent, not merely perfunctory, advisory system, so that students by the end of the sophomore year will begin to give thought to the choice of a calling and to laying the foundation most suitable to the calling chosen. All the work below the junior year, and a large part of that of the junior and senior years, under a wise outlook, should consist of general foundational studies. In short the college must seek to perform its chief function by means of studies in the general foundational group primarily, secondarily by those of the quasi-vocational group.

The serial grouping aims merely to bring out the main educative value of the various subjects. The environmental studies are those the chief function of which, on the whole, is to put the student consciously en rapport with the physical, vital, and social world he is to live in. The cultural studies and brain-stretchers are the subjects about which the educated man has traditionally been supposed to know something, or which are supposed to be of peculiar value in mental "dis

cipline." The symbolical subjects are those which give access to ideas and means of expressing them. The basis of distinction between these three series is less distinct than that between the three groups. The serial division is not meant to imply that the symbolical studies may not have some secondary value as environmental studies, or that both symbolical and environmental studies may not be, in their respective ways, brain-stretchers, or again that the environmental studies have

"cultural" value. The outlines of Series A and (to a lesser extent) that of B are purposely left incomplete and indefinite. We do not mean to confine the primary or secondary schools to symbolical studies. Symbolical studies belong mainly to the pre-college stage, but no sharp line can be drawn. Modern language and mathematics will of course be pursued in the college and later, for both disciplinary and vocational, or quasi-vocational, ends.

A distinction, tho not a sharp one, should be drawn between cultural studies and brain-stretchers. The subjects dignified as "cultural" change with the changing ideals of what a liberally educated person should have studied. As a distinct group in the educational world, at least outside the polite atmosphere of young ladies' seminaries, they are destined to vanish. As the field of knowledge widens more and more, and the ideal of social efficiency displaces that of polite individual attainment, no one group of subjects can arrogate to itself the claim of sole possession of the liberalizing function. The purely cultural subjects are the luxuries of education, and should therefore be put at the bottom of a scale of educational values. If time and means must be economized, the cultural studies must yield place to the more utilitarian foundational and quasi-vocational subjects. In the long run we shall find, however, that in emphasizing social utility as our educational aim we shall have gained a deeper and more ethical culture for the individual.

The disciplinary studies, or brain-stretchers, have been, in the past, simply the cultural studies viewed with reference to mental mechanics. Disregarding questions of conventional culture, it is a question whether the college curriculum has

room for courses the only purpose of which is "brain-stretching." The fact that many so-called disciplinary studies have a large orientating power, and can be taught in a way to have still more, will save a place for them; but a subject to retain a place must have this orientating value to a very appreciable degree. Our world contains too many things, throws about us too many relations, a knowledge of which is essential, to allow us to spend much time on brain-stretching in the abstract, the reality of which is hypothetical or at least open to question. Philosophy, logic, mathematics, and science study for training in scientific method, will undoubtedly retain a place, primarily because of their disciplinary powers; but had they not also a considerable orientating value they would have to take rank with the educational luxuries.

The environmental studies hold the strategic position in the coming education. The best mind will be relatively inefficient if it is not stocked with abundant knowledge and understanding of the subject-matter of environment, with which it has to work. It is scarcely possible to over-emphasize this fact. After all, the best way to stretch a mind is to put something into it. This is just where the old formal discipline theory and the tenacious adherence to classics are anomalous when confronted with the needs and aims of modern education. Both the liberal culture idea and that of formal discipline could better subserve the needs of a time when education was avowedly the special privilege of the few. Today, when we ought to hope to make it democratically universal, they are out of joint with the times. Ideas of "culture" and "discipline" were at home in a highly individualistic, aristocratic, and less complex society than we have today. They were fitted to the then existing spirit of education, and the function of the college, for education then was either frankly and avowedly aristocratic and non-utilitarian-the badge of an adventitious leisure class or it had an out-and-out vocational aim, the training of boys (never girls) for the polite professions. Men who went to college were either men of wealth who wanted to know "what an educated man should know," or they were boys destined for the ministry, for the bar, for medicine, or

for teaching. These callings constituted a sort of vocational aristocracy. A college education consequently lifted a man above his fellows in social esteem, as the possessor of a mysterious something forever beyond the reach of his brothers and sisters who had stayed at home to pay his way thru college. The reader is familiar with the long process of educational evolution which has in part rescued us from this aristocracy-of-learning idea. The growth of the public high schools, of colleges, and of universities needs only to be called to mind. But in much of our education, from the first year of the high school to the last year of the college, about all we have done, until recently, was to substitute a pseudo-democratic ideal for the old aristocratic practise. Educational authorities virtually said, "Here is the ideal sort of education for every one; if you can't afford it, or if you think it doesn't meet your particular needs, that is your lookout, not ours." The striking exception to this attitude came in the establishment of the technical schools in the state universities, of state normal schools, and in the differentiation and enrichment of city high school curriculums. The persistence of the old aristocratic notions has been illustrated in the doggedly dictatorial attitude of the colleges toward the high schools with regard to college entrance requirements. In protest against this pseudodemocratic idealism has come the decline of the percentage of men in colleges, of boys in high schools, and the overwhelming demand for the "useful" and "practical" in education. In crude reaction to it, also, came earlier the elective system, based on the monumental faith that a cub freshman or a raw sophomore, inspired or irritated, as the case might be, by the perfunctory remarks of a so-called “adviser," could and would select the courses that would give him the best foundation for future needs. The elective system was only a half step, but it did open the way for changes that are yet to come. Despite advances made, however, and despite the warning movements now so apparent, the old aristocratic ideal is still hanging to our skirts. It is time to shake it off, and to make the college more nearly answer the needs of democracy, industrial, political, and social. Real educational democ

racy, as well as an aim at real educational efficiency, will take into consideration the fact that youth is short, and that time and means spent in getting an education must be economized by nearly every individual. Instead of providing a so-called ideal culture for the few, it will more and more seek to give an adequate foundation for the vocational and civic efficiency of the many.

In the pursuit of this newer purpose, the college, in order to give the student a needed acquaintance with his future natural and social environment, will have to make more and more use of the studies classed as environmental. Not only is the student going to be turned out into a general social and economic environment, but whatever vocation he goes into will have its own specific surroundings, natural, economic, and social, with which it is desirable he should have some preliminary acquaintance. Moreover, what he does in that vocation, especially if he assumes that leadership which college men are always being told is theirs-apparently by a sort of divine right-will affect the welfare of people in other environments, often quite different from his own. Whether the effect is good or bad will depend upon the extent and quality of his knowledge of, and sympathy with, that other environment. A recognition of the factor of special vocational environment really underlies the present movement toward vocational and industrial training. We must recognize, however, the need of a wider and deeper knowledge of environment than seems to come within the ken of many of the industrial education enthusiasts. It is precisely because the present movement for industrial education contains not only promise of great gains, but possibilities of great mistakes, that every college teacher should ask what the function of the college really is and what his subject has to contribute to the fulfilment of that function.

We have to remember that our environment is above all human, social, in character, as well as material and natural. And this human element in our surroundings is just the most ticklish part of our world, just the part that means most to us in every way, and consequently the part to which we