CHILDREN LEARNING TO READ AND WRITE. 383 



Now the educational system in practice in the two or three hun- 

 dred thousand public schools in the United States is a somewhat 

 definite one, with a somewhat fixed order of studies through the dif- 

 ferent years or grades. In a majority of the States children are ad- 

 mitted to the schools at the age of six; in more than one third of the 

 States children of five are admitted. In a general way Ave may say 

 that during the first four years of school life the principal subjects 

 occupying the time of the children are reading, writing, and arith- 

 metic. To be more exact, we may cite, for instance, the city schools 

 of Chicago.* Exclusive of recesses and opening exercises, there are 

 in these schools thirteen hundred and fifty minutes of school work per 

 week. Of this time, in the first and second grades, six hundred and 

 seventy-five minutes are devoted to reading, seventy-five minutes to 

 writing, and two hundred and twenty-five minutes to mathematics. 

 Seventy-two per cent of the total time is therefore consumed by 

 these subjects. In the third grade the proportion is the same; in 

 the fourth grade it is somewhat more than fifty per cent. I have 

 mentioned the Chicago schools because this is one of those school 

 systems where a liberal introduction of other subjects, such as Nature 

 study, physical culture, singing, and oral English, has somewhat less- 

 ened the time given to reading, writing, and arithmetic. Other cities, 

 with few exceptions, will be found to give more rather than less 

 time to these subjects. In the country schools, and indeed in a vast 

 number of town and city schools, practically all the time during these 

 early years is given to reading, writing, and arithmetic. 



We must conclude, therefore, if our educational system is a ra- 

 tional one, that reading, writing, and arithmetic are the subjects 

 peculiarly adapted to the mind of the child between the ages of five 

 and ten. It is worth while to inquire from the standpoint of child 

 psychology whether this be true. It should be observed, in the first 

 place, that the manner in which our educational system has grown up 

 is no guarantee that it rests upon a psychological basis. Our schools 

 are exceedingly conservative. Any innovations or radical changes 

 are resisted by the parents of the children even more strenuously than 

 by school boards, superintendents, and teachers. Notwithstanding 

 numerous and important minor improvements, the school system as 

 a whole remains unchanged. Our children of seven and eight years 

 are learning to read and write because our grandfathers were so 

 doing at that age. 



We can not here discuss the origin of our present school cur- 

 riculum, but, as explaining the prominence given to reading, writing, 

 and arithmetic, it is worthy of notice that originally the elementary 



* See the article on Courses of Study in the Elementary Schools of the United States, 

 by T. R. Crosswell, Pedagogical Seminary, April, 1897. 



