Practical and Ideal: What We Pay for Efficiency: Address at A. W. Club Mr. W. W. Bartlett, principal of the American School, gave an address on Tuesday before the American Woman's Club, to which the fathers and hust&inds were also invited, in which he outlined the Present Day Tendencies in American Education. He pointed out that they were of two kinds, first' the tendency toward the breaking away from tradition in favour of practical methods, and second the tendency to lose the spiritual content of education. Professor Bartlett brought out strongly the comparison between the old and the new by enumerate ing the subjects offered in high schools then and now. Hb mentioned the practical methods by which children are nowadays taught to be leaders among their schoolmates, how they are stimulated to interest in their work, ete. He said that the aim of American education was tending toward the practical and showed the effect the World War had upon this because it forced the colleges to open their doors to students who had taken business courses rather than classical ones in high school.
The educators of the country had clung and wote still clinging -to the traditions so dear to them, but they were gradually being forced to admit that students must, in these days, be taught to work if they were to compete with those other graduates of the University of Hard Knocks, Mr. Bartlett also made it clear that he did not mean necessarily the "power of making money" by the word "practical," but rather the things that go to fit a person for every-day life, and that provide proper balance. ''However," said Mr. Bartlett, "in making these splendid advancements in practicability, we have in many places been losing in spiritual content. The practicability of education determines the tools our Future men and women shall be equipped with. The spiritual content determines how they will use these tools." He brought this fact out through comparison between the older and the more modern spirit of students and showed its tendency toward the growth of selfishness in the schoolgoing body. The remedy lay in placing before students the ideal of unselfish service in the teachers. "Character is caught not taught."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.