This doctrine of formal discipline has had a tremendous effect upon each stage of education in practically every country and during every period until recently. Even the scientists and advocates of a variety of other subjects, instead of arguing for content value and particular training, have made strenuous efforts to meet this argument by pointing out the formal discipline in their own studies (see pp. 404 f.). Excellent examples of the effect of this theory upon educational institutions are found in the formal classicism of the English grammar and public schools and universities and of the German gymnasiums. While in the United States a newer and more flexible society has enabled changes to be more readily made, as late as the last decade of the nineteenth century, Greek, Latin, and mathematics largely made up the staples in many high schools, colleges, and universities, and the husks of formal grammar were often defended in elementary education upon the score of formal discipline. [Sidenote: Specific, not general, power.] [Sidenote: Content, rather than form, stressed.] [Sidenote: But some generalized powers possible.] =Opposition to the Disciplinary Theory and More Recent Modification.=--At the beginning of the twentieth century, however, with the abandonment of the ‘faculty psychology’ and the development of educational theory, a decided reaction from the doctrines of formal discipline began among psychologists and common sense educators. It is now almost universally conceded that specific, rather than general, power is developed by the various studies, and no student is held to be unworthy of education or impervious to culture, simply because he is not adapted to the classics or mathematics. In consequence, the content of studies, rather than the process of acquisition, has come to be emphasized, the curriculum has everywhere been broadened, and the principle of the election of subjects largely recognized. It has, however, been felt within the last half dozen years that in reacting from the old theory of formal discipline, educators went too far. While it is still held that emphasis must be laid upon the specific character of mental training, there are some generalized powers and values to be obtained. It is realized that “a general benefit can be derived from specific training in so far as the person trained has consciously wrought out in connection with the specific training a general concept of method, based upon the specific methods used in that training” (F. A. Hodge). Thus a student who has once realized the value of close reasoning through mathematical demonstrations is likely to develop a general concept of method, and can hardly be satisfied any longer with slovenly thinking in other fields; and the fine discriminations discovered in the classical authors, the balanced judgment used in historical method, and the accuracy required in the study of the sciences, may well be abstracted and tend to furnish a generalized