grappling with. In very truth, pedagogists of to-day appear to be quite certain of only one point, that "the old is worthless and that something new must be produced at any price."[1]
We do not deny that our age demands "something" new in education. Growth and development are necessary in educational systems. Every age and every nation has its own spirit, its peculiar ways and means to meet a given end, and these very ways and means inevitably exert a great influence on educational methods and call for modifications and adaptations of what has met the purpose of the past. An educational system, fitted in every detail to all times and all nations, is an impossibility. For the majority of cases it would be a Procrustean bed. It would be folly, therefore, to claim that even the best system of education in all its details were as fit for the twentieth century as for the sixteenth, or that the same system in its entirety might be introduced into Japan or China as well as into Germany, England and the United States.
For an educational system must aim not at educating men in general, but at educating the youth of a
- ↑ See Dr. Dittes, in Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1894-95, vol. I, p. 332. – From different sides complaints are heard that many educationists of to-day are conspicuous for their contempt of all that was venerated formerly. Dr. Matthias of Berlin, one of the most distinguished schoolmen of Germany, wrote recently: "Men of sound judgment point with alarm to a sort of pedagogical pride and arrogance of the younger teachers, which was unknown to the older generation." Monatschrift für höhere Schulen, January 1902, p. 9. – Similarly Professor Willmann of the University of Prague: "A morbid hunting after novelties and a haughty contempt of all traditions are the characteristics of the modern educational agitation." In Vigilate, I, p. 31.
