PRESENT PROBLEMS OF THE SCHOOL 107 



while the classrooms occupied by grades of the first six years are 

 crowded, those devoted to the seventh and eighth years are often 

 partially empty. 



In order to obviate the waste of effort, of time, and of space involved 

 in the present organization of schools, I suggest the following 

 arrangement : 



(1) School life, above the kindergarten age, should be divided into 

 two equal periods - - the elementary, corresponding to the epoch of 

 childhood; and the secondary, corresponding to the epoch of youth. 

 Each period would provide for six years of school work - - the 

 elementary, from six to twelve; the secondary, from thirteen to 

 eighteen. , 



(2) For economic reasons, inasmuch as children leave school 

 rapidly after they are of age to go to work, the secondary schools 

 should be of two kinds, which might be called the pre-academic and 

 the academic. The pre-academic schools would provide three years 

 of work, from thirteen to fifteen, and would be established at con- 

 venient points selected with a view to accommodate the children 

 promoted from the elementary schools. The academic schools, 

 which would be comparatively few in number and established only 

 in crowded centres, would provide another three years of work for 

 youths from sixteen to eighteen. In this way space would be 

 economized, much more work would be accomplished, and it may be 

 reasonably anticipated that our young men and young women, before 

 leaving the high school or academy, would have covered most, if not 

 all, of the work that is now accomplished by the end of the sophomore 

 year in the average college. A beginning of this plan has been made 

 in several cities by the enrichment of the last two years of the ele- 

 mentary course of study, through the introduction of a foreign 

 language, algebra, and elementary physics. The gradually extending 

 use of the departmental system of teaching, by which one teacher, 

 instead of teaching all subjects for a year or half a year, teaches one 

 subject through two years, is also contributing to the same result. 

 Teachers who teach subjects for which they have special talent and 

 preparation, and in which they are interested, to pupils thirteen and 

 fourteen years of age, are almost certain to adopt methods suitable 

 to the period of youth rather than to the period of childhood. 



After the problem of the distribution of time comes the problem 

 of the elementary curriculum. What studies shall be pursued by 

 children between the ages of six and thirteen? The answer to this 

 question is found in the fundamental assumption that mental educa- 

 tion is the gradual adjustment of the child to his spiritual environ- 

 ment. 



President Butler was probably the first to advance this view of 

 education as a development of Mr. John Fiske's discovery that the 



