The pioneer democracy of America itself is responsible for a method of instruction typically American. The superstitious faith in education was the basis of a system whereby many busy, middle-aged persons whose early advantages had been limited, by means of attractive summaries, outlines, and handbooks, could acquaint themselves with the names of men, books, and events which form the Binet-Simon test of culture, and enable the initiate to hold up his head in circles where the best that has been thought or said in the world is habitually referred to. This method is carried out in hundreds of cultural camp-meetings every summer, by thousands of popular lectures, in countless programmes of study for women’s clubs. Unfortunately it is coming to be not only the typical but the only method of general education in America. Chautauqua has penetrated the college and the university. Better that our fathers had died, their intellectual thirst unsatisfied, than that they had left this legacy of mental soft drinks for their children. Thus far I have had the college chiefly in mind, but the same observations apply equally to the secondary school. The elective system has made its way thither, and indeed one of the chief difficulties of organizing a college curriculum for the general student which shall represent something in the way of finding things out, of reasoning from facts to conclusions, and of training in voluntary attention, is that of determining any common ground on the basis of previous attainment. Not only the elective system but the Chautauqua method has largely permeated our high schools. The teachers, often on annual appointment, more than the college instructors, with comparative security of tenure, are dependent on the favour of pupils, a favour to be maintained in competition with dances, movies, and _The Saturday Evening Post_, by interesting them. It is therefore a common thing for teachers to repeat in diluted form the courses which they took in college--and which in the original were at best no saturate solutions of the subject. The other day, on visiting a class in Shakespeare at a Y.M.C.A. school, I ventured to suggest to the teacher that the method used was rather advanced. “Ah, but my daughter at high school,” he said, “is having Professor Blank’s course in the mediæval drama.” Now such a course intended for graduate students investigating sources, influences, and variations among saints’ plays and mystery plays, could have no educational value in material or method for a high-school pupil, but it was, no doubt, as interesting as a Persian tale.