Older Subjects Products of Long Selection
Efficient teachers have always assumed toward the subject-matter of their courses an attitude of the type described. As a result there has been in every generation of schools some progress in organizing courses. Little by little experience has refined the practices of schools. Take, for example, Latin or any of the older subjects. Countless teachers have contributed to the organization of this subject. There is very little probability that pupils will encounter in first-year Latin anything that they ought not to be asked to learn, because the details have been tried out on successive generations of learners, and only that has been retained in first-year Latin which can be taught in that year. In the newer subjects, on the contrary, there is the greatest uncertainty. In his enthusiasm for the new ideas which come to his own mind, the teacher of biology rushes forward to generalizations which are too mature for his first-year classes. The subject-matter will have to be tried out and sifted before it is as well selected as is the course in Latin. The teachers of the new subjects will inevitably pass through a series of the same kind of sifting processes through which the teachers of Latin have passed. Even when some of the problems thus arising are settled, the new subjects will still be difficult of organization. Thus biology is changing by virtue of the evolution of the science at a rate which complicates the case very much more than it can ever be complicated in Latin.