1. By Relation of Subject Matter to Children’s Purposes

In harmony with the previous discussion of standards for judging the quality of instruction, as a whole, the quality of the curriculum in particular is to be determined partly by its tendency to influence the tastes, purposes, and hopes of children. Any curriculum for the elementary school should have its content selected from among those experiences of mankind that have seemed most valuable. That is to be presupposed. But this selection can be indifferent to the tendencies, interests, and capacities of children in general, and of certain ages in particular, and aim only at present storage of facts and ideas that may count in a dim future, i.e., in adult life. Or it may be made with constant reference to the abilities, tastes, and needs of children at the present time. In the former case, motive on the part of children is overlooked; in the latter case, the extent of provision for it is accepted as one of the standards by which the curriculum is to be judged. We represent the latter point of view.[54]

The group of thinkers to whom McMurry refers with disfavor as absorbed in methods rather than content has never been more ably represented than by President Hadley, extracts from whose statement are as follows:

Greek is an intellectual game where the umpires know the rules better than they know the rules in the game of French, for instance, or history, or botany. A man’s rating in an examination on any one of these last three subjects is largely the result of accident unless the examiner is quite unusually skillful. A man’s rating in Greek, on the other hand, means something. There never were intellectual competitions keener than the classical competitions at Oxford in the days when the best men in England wanted their sons to learn that particular game.

Unfortunately, a large number of the strongest men, both in England and in the United States, have decided that this game takes more time than it is worth. Personally, I believe that this change of mind is in many respects a misfortune; that in trying to get more practical results in the way of knowledge or culture a great many American college boys have lost the training which the Greek would have given them and gained nothing of equal value in its place....

It was a mistake for the advocates of the old curriculum to think that all the students required the same treatment. It is, I believe, an equal mistake for the advocates of the elective system to think that each student requires a different treatment. For while there is a very large number of subjects of interest to study, and an almost infinite variety of occupations which the students are going to follow afterwards, there is a comparatively small number of types of mind with which we have to deal. If we can have four or five honor courses, something like those of the English universities, where the studies are grouped and the examinations arranged to meet the needs of these different types, we can, I think, realize the chief advantages of the elective system or the group system without subjecting ourselves to their evils. I am confident that we can secure a degree of collective intellectual interest which is now absent from most of our colleges, and can establish competitions which will be recognized not only in college but in the world as places where the best men can show what is in them.

It may be objected that any such arrangement would render it difficult for a boy to study the particular things that he was going to use in after life. I regard this as its cardinal advantage. The ideal college education seems to me to be one where a student learns things that he is not going to use in after life, by methods that he is going to use. The former element gives the breadth, the latter element gives the training.[55]

Formal Discipline and Transfer of Training

The controversy here illustrated has led to the development of a number of technical phrases. The doctrine that emphasizes form or method as opposed to content is known as the doctrine of formal discipline. The advocates of this doctrine defend the view that training gained in one field will transfer to other fields of activity. Stated in these terms the doctrine is referred to as that of the transfer of training.

The doctrine of transfer of training is capable of experimental and statistical verification or refutation. A vast body of evidence has been collected in recent years. The conclusions to be drawn from this evidence are clear. There are certain general habits, such as concentration of attention and power of arranging and expressing ideas, which carry over from one field of experience to another. The transfer of training is facilitated if the original training is given in such a form that it lends itself readily to application in new spheres of thought. So important is the development of general habits that it is entirely legitimate to proceed at every stage of education slowly enough to give to each subject its relations through a variety of possible applications. It is recognized as impossible to give in the schools direct special training for all possible lines of activity upon which the pupil is to enter. Some effort must be expended in cultivating what may properly be called the applying attitude of mind. Once the applying attitude is aroused in any individual, the transfer of training will be likely to go on through individual recognition of the advantages of application.

Relation of Subjects to Maturity of Pupils

The quotation from McMurry given some pages back suggests another aspect of this whole matter which has been a subject of much dispute. When should certain kinds of training be introduced into the curriculum? A quotation will help to make the problem clear.

So far as high-school instruction is concerned, the most important practical question raised in the present discussion is whether the ability to learn a foreign vocabulary varies with age. It is almost universally claimed that a student must begin a language when young in order to learn it effectively and economically. In opposition to this theory, we shall maintain, as in the case of motor skill, that a foreign vocabulary can be learned just as economically at the later end of the period from six to eighteen years of age as at any other part of it. As the basis for this contention we have some very closely related evidence from experimental psychology, in the work done upon facility in memorizing at different ages.[56]