TEE EWE SCEOOL COURSE 31 



important tool of every man who possesses it. It is wanted in every 

 profession in every walk of life. The high-school course of every man 

 who acquires it must be judged successful and no pains should be spared 

 to emhpasize its importance. How to give this power is another ques- 

 tion. Probably the real teacher of English, like the poet — which 

 indeed he must be — is born, not made. 



The rest of the high-school course has a minor claim on our atten- 

 tion. Algebra and geometry have a high practical as well as definite 

 intellectual value. These constitute, moreover, the only door to the 

 profession of engineering. History may be learned in the high school, 

 but its significance is mostly seen later. The practical demands of 

 intelligent citizenship seem to call for modern history, elementary 

 economics and civil government as high-school subjects. Besides, those 

 who do not go to college will read no history they do not begin in the 

 high school. The languages, ancient and modern, have a high value 

 to those who can master and use them, for every new language opens 

 to a man a new world and the influences of a new civilization. Most 

 high-school students get very little from any of them, and the one 

 intellectually most important — the Greek — is practically excluded from 

 our secondary schools as being of least practical value. Without in 

 the least underrating the value of Latin to " roman-minded men," who 

 make a manly use of it, there is no doubt that the average American 

 high school boy gets less out of Latin than out of any other subject in 

 the curriculum. We may regret this, but we must face it as a fact. 

 For the rest, drawing ought to have a place in the course if only for 

 its value as an aid to observation. " A pencil is one of the best of 

 eyes," as Agassiz used to say, and drawing is one of the means of 

 expressing observation in terms of action. 



In brief, the American high school ought to limit the range of its 

 activities so as not to do too much at the expense of thoroughness. It 

 ought to broaden its range so as to give to each boy or girl what is 

 individually best, and it ought to keep in touch throughout with reali- 

 ties, with the power of doing things, and it ought to cherish as its 

 choicest art, the cultivation of the power of clear, accurate and original 

 expression in the greatest of all languages, which is our own. 



