1. Each study must be valued in proportion as it develops power; and power is developed by self-activity.
2. The memory must be employed in strict subservience to the higher faculties of the mind.
3. Whatever instruction is given, it must be adapted to the actual state of the pupil, and not ruled by the wants of the future boy or man.
4. More time must be given to the study of nature and to modern language and literature; less to the ancient languages.
5. The body must be educated as well as the mind.
6. Rich and poor alike must be taught to use their eyes and hands. 7. The higher education of women must be cared for no less than that of men.
8. Teachers, no less than doctors, must go through a course of professional training.
To these there must in time be added another:
9. All methods shall have a scientific foundation, i.e., they shall be based on the laws of the mind, or shall have been tested by those laws.
§ 31. When this program is adopted, even as the object of our efforts, we shall, indeed, have a New Education. At present the encouragement of self-activity is thought of, if at all, only as a “counsel of perfection.” Our school work is chiefly mechanical and will long remain so. “From the primary school to the college productive creative doing is almost wholly excluded. Knowledge in its barrenest form is communicated, and tested in the barrenest, wordiest way possible. Never is the learner taught or permitted to apply his knowledge to even second-hand life-purpose.... So inveterate is the habit of the school that the Kindergarten itself, although invented by the deep-feeling and far-seeing Froebel for the very purpose of correcting this fault, has in most cases fallen a victim to its influence.” So says W. H. Hailmann (Kindergarten, May, 1888) and those who best know what usually goes on in the school-room are the least likely to differ from him.