"The groundwork of education cannot be modified to meet the variant demands of race or colour, previous conditions or present needs. The general processes of discipline and culture must form a fixed and unalterable part of any adequate educational programme. On the other hand, there is quite a wide latitude of accommodation for special needs and social circumstances in what might be called the practical aspect of education. There has recently sprung up a class of educational philosophers who would restrict the term practical education to those forms of knowledge or formulas of information which can be converted into cash equivalent on demand. The truth is, that all knowledge which enables the recipient to do with added efficiency the work which falls to his lot in this world, whether that work be tilling the soil or plying a handicraft, healing the sick or enlightening the ignorant, uplifting the lowly or administering spiritual solace, is 'practical' in the highest and best significance of that term.... Traditional branches of study have lost much of their talismanic value. The so-called higher education is no longer confined to the classic tongues of two famous far-off peoples. The pedagogical watchword is _method_ rather than subject-matter. The higher method of inquiry and investigation can be applied to the growing roots of living plants as well as to the dry stems of a dead language. The problems growing out of the population of Alabama or Florida are as intricate in their relation, and as far-reaching in their consequence, and, withal, as important a subject for study, as any ever involved in the European peninsulas."