Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV NEW AIMS IDEALS AND METHODS IN EDUCATION / The many recent modifications in home, industrial and social life inevitably lead society toward new social, educational and moral ideals. During the last century industrial and scientific progress outran all other forms of development. A problem of to-day is to bring our educational, legal, economic and social values and ideals into harmonious relations with the present industrial situation. There is a continual conflict between the ideals and customs established under conditions existing in preceding generations, and newer ones called into being by changing economic and social conditions. The aims and ideals which were presented to the schoolboy and the schoolgirl of a generation ago are not as appropriate and fitting now as then. Society needs time to adjust itself to the kaleidoscopic changes of the last quarter of a century. Time is, indeed, required to remodel and to reconstruct our educational system upon a new basis; in order to perform this task intelligently, efficiently, and with the least possible friction, consideration should be given to the aims and ideals which education ought to present to the students of to-day.The haphazard, patched-up condition of our school curriculum is the result of a conflict between the traditional and the practical ideals in education. The former overlooks almost completely the dynamic view of the world; its eyes are turned backward toward the past. It magnifies the desirability of disciplinary and purely cultural studies; and on the other hand it minimizes the value of, and often sneers at, the practical and the concrete. An extreme example of this spirit is presented in the familiar story of the old college professor of higher mathematics, who chose that subject for his spec...