THE PLACE OF THE FITTING-SCHOOL IN AMERICAN EDUCATION
There can be no doubt that the present generation is experiencing a marked disturbance of opinion and practice in the matter of education. Other periods of sharp and sudden revolutionary action have occurred in this, as in all human affairs. But the reasons for the marked character of the present disturbance are not difficult of statement. We must indeed recognize a current wide-spreading dissatisfaction with everything belonging to the existing order, which, since its sources are somewhat hidden, we may attribute to the Zeitgeist—the inexplicable or unexplained mental drift of the age. But the enormous recent growths of all the sciences, the strong practical tendencies which urge the cry for what bears visible fruit in education, and the extremely varied interests represented in modern culture, are the more obvious causes of the prevalent disturbance.
Thus far it has been the schools of the higher and the highest learning which have chiefly felt the pressure of the oncoming of the so-called "new
