Synthetic Courses in Our Schools and Colleges

Abstract

thought that the study of these ancient languages, permeated as they are with rich imagery and brilliant thinking for their times and painstakingly developed to express complicated ideas, would discipline the minds of the students as the study of nothing else would. Little else was organized in any sort of form for instruction at the time, and libraries full of books, as we know them, were nonexistent. Formal intellectual education was first concerned with languages. Content was of somewhat secondary significance. This traditionalism has persisted to the present, although the study of psychology has shown us the fallacy of the disciplinary concept as the major determining objective in education. Educationists have been redefining education, and education has taken on many significant aspects in addition to, and perhaps more important than, discipline per se. Literary excellence has continued to be recognized as important and desirable; but mathematics, science, the social studies, and practical aspects of engineering, medici e, de tistry, pharmacy, nursing, and other professions have become equally identifiable and vital. Educators have built our schools and