384 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



school existed to teach just these three subjects. The primitive 

 schoolmaster was not superior to the parents of the child, usually not 

 their equal, in anything except his knowledge of " letters." So the 

 child was sent to school for a short time to learn letters. It was not 

 at all the function of the school to educate the child in all that was 

 necessary to fit him for the duties of life. Afterward, as the scope 

 of the school was enlarged, other subjects were added, and these were 

 put after the original ones, and the schoolmaster, furthermore, came 

 rather to take the place of an educator than a mere teacher of letters. 

 It is conceivable, therefore, that the present accepted order of studies 

 in our elementary schools rests upon an accidental rather than upon 

 a psychological basis. It is true that modern educators have ex- 

 pressly considered the subject of the order and correlation of studies, 

 as, for instance, in the case of the Committee of Fifteen, and that, 

 while recommending minor changes in the school curriculum, they 

 have not usually thought of questioning the position so long held by 

 reading, writing, and arithmetic. In the report of the committee 

 just referred to we find this expression: " The conclusion is reached 

 that learning to read and write should be the leading study of the 

 pupil in his first four years of school." But, again, it was not the 

 function of this committee to suggest sweeping changes, nor to raise 

 the inquiry whether the system itself rests upon a psychological basis. 

 Even if it did not rest upon such a basis, expressions like the above 

 would not be unnatural on the part of committees appointed by bodies 

 representing the system as a whole. 



We may not, then, conclude a priori that our system of primary 

 education is a sound one. There have indeed been other wholly dif- 

 ferent systems giving excellent results in their time, as, for instance, 

 that of the ancient Greeks, where music and gymnastics, not reading, 

 writing, and arithmetic, were the principal subjects occupying the 

 time of the pupils. 



Much attention has recently been given to the subjects of the 

 physiology and psychology of children. These studies have been 

 systematic, painstaking, and exact. It seems, indeed, to many people 

 improbable that anything very new or very remarkable should just 

 at this time be found out about children, and there have not been 

 wanting either prominent educators or psychologists who have given 

 public expression to warnings against the new " child study." But 

 this, again, is not conclusive, for students of history may recall that 

 every advance in science has met just such opposition — for instance, 

 bacteriology, organic evolution, chemistry, and astronomy. Fur- 

 thermore, when we reflect that scientific advance in this century has 

 ever been, and inevitably, from the simple to the complex, and, 

 further, that the brain of the child is the most complex thing in the 



