594 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



unless they have an opportunity to study a foreign language in the 

 grammar school, they do not get it at all. 



Other arguments for such sequence of our language courses as I am 

 pleading for are near at hand; e. g., a pupil's knowledge of, and com- 

 mand over, his mother tongue gains enormously through the study of 

 a foreign language — a modern language is as good for this purpose, for 

 young pupils, as Latin, or even better than Latin; and a modern lan- 

 guage in itself may have a commercial value which Latin never has, 

 except, at present, for teachers. 



Now, if we had two or three pre-high-school years of a modern 

 language, followed by at least one year — the first high school year — 

 of another modern language in the high school, and this followed by 

 three years of Latin and two of Greek for those who care for the ancient 

 languages, who can doubt that our present somewhat meager achieve- 

 ments in the classics in the high school would be greatly increased in 

 quantity and that they would be vastly better in quality? This is the 

 sensible language course of the future for those who study the classics 

 in the high school, as I conceive it, when the high school is completely 

 articulated to the grammar school. When that time comes I think, 

 also, that we shall have precisely inverted the relative emphasis we 

 now place on the classics and on the modern languages in pre-collegiate 

 education for collegiate pupils. We shall follow the pre-high-school 

 modern language courses by substantial high school courses in the 

 languages, and so continue the real education of the pupil begun in the 

 grammar school, instead of deferring it as we now do for the classical 

 student until he reaches the college. For, at present, classical educa- 

 tion in the secondary school, like the formal education that used to pre- 

 cede it in the elementary school, is, for most pupils, only an alleged 

 preparation for education, not education itself. 



When we articulate our pre-high-school courses in history, science, 

 mathematics, manual training, and the rest, with the corresponding 

 high school course, in some such way as has just been suggested for 

 foreign language courses, we shall then make the pupil's school career 

 a real and not a deferred education at every stage of his progress; and 

 the historical disparity between the hind of studies pursued below the 

 high school and those pursued in the high school will disappear. There 

 will be no artificial separation of the high school from the rest of the 

 school system. We shall have adjusted our educational endeavor to 

 the real process of the pupil's unfolding development, and shall really 

 make our schools minister equally to all classes of pupils, whether they 

 have the good fortune to be born of wealthy and socially superior 

 parents, or whether merely equipped with ability and earnestness, they 

 are obliged to make the most of the brief educational career their cir- 

 cumstances will permit. 



