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Essays on Education and Kindred Subjects - Everyman's Library by Herbert Spencer
page 13 of 464 (02%)
sedentary and monotonous. For all such persons, free plays are vastly
better than formal exercises of any sort.

The wide adoption of Spencer's educational ideas has had to await the
advent of the new educational administration and the new public interest
therein. It awaited the coming of the state university in the United
States and of the city university in England, the establishment of
numerous technical schools, the profound modifications made in grammar
schools and academies, and the multiplication in both countries of the
secondary schools called high schools. In other words, his ideas
gradually gained admission to a vast number of new institutions of
education, which were created and maintained because both the
governments and the nations felt a new sense of responsibility for the
training of the future generations. These new agencies have been created
in great variety, and the introduction of Spencer's ideas has been much
facilitated by this variety. These institutions were national, state, or
municipal. They were tax-supported or endowed. They charged tuition
fees, or were open to competent children or adults without fee. They
undertook to meet alike the needs of the individual and the needs of the
community; and this undertaking involved the introduction of many new
subjects of instruction and many new methods. Through their variety they
could be sympathetic with both individualism and collectivism. The
variety of instruction offered is best illustrated in the strongest
American universities, some of which are tax-supported and some endowed.
These universities maintain a great variety of courses of instruction in
subjects none of which was taught with the faintest approach to adequacy
in American universities sixty years ago; but in making these extensions
the universities have not found it necessary to reduce the instruction
offered in the classics and mathematics. The traditional cultural
studies are still provided; but they represent only one programme among
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