Mechanical Aspects the First to be Standardized
In all cases standardization begins with the mechanical aspects of school work. These are more susceptible to exact quantitative description and are the first to be taken up. Some writers have professed to find in this a reason for rejecting the whole movement toward standardization. There are, they assert, products of teaching which are subtle and intangible. These are the products which are most highly to be prized. Thoroughly to standardize penmanship and oral reading and algebra is to set aside these more important matters.
Two answers are to be made to this objection to the movement toward standardization. In the first place, the higher values of education are not secured by teachers who are negligent of the fundamental mechanical requirements. The teacher who successfully trains his pupil to study history will make of him a good reader also. In the second place, if it should prove to be desirable to give less time than is given at present to training in the mechanical aspects of school subjects, it will certainly be absolutely essential that the limits and restrictions be set up with discrimination. We shall never be able to deal intelligently with the mechanical aspects of education until we have studied them.
A third statement which can be ventured with assurance in the light of the recent history of this movement is that its limits cannot be set. Each year new aspects of school work are measured with exactness. It is certain that the ultimate conquests of measurement will push the opponents back into their own territory.