Our Problem Is Different1

Abstract

A BOUT thirty years ago, Dr. j Joseph M. Rice, who was then editor of the Forum, started a revolution in public education in this country. He drew up tests in spelling, and travelled from city to city and gave his tests to the school children. He then published an article in the Forum in which he showed that the children in some of our city school systems spent twice as much time as did the children in other systems in the study of spelling. He went on to show that when the children had completed the elementary grades, those who had spent the greatest amount of time on the study of spelling could not spell any better than those who had spent only half as much time on it. Dr. Rice went ahead and gave similar standard tests to the children of city school systems in such subjects as history, geography, and arithmetic, and discovered other astonishing conditions with regard to the lack of effectiveness of much of the work being done in the public schools. He wrote articles about his researches, he lectured before educational associations, and brought down upon himself a veritable storm of denial and denunciation. He did not make himself popular with the educators, but he started an educational revolution. When Dr. Rice did his pioneer work, public education in this country was