498 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



mediaeval, and modern European history — and witk the literature 

 forms a unit course. English as a study does not appear, or else 

 history and English are each given half time, and run through both 

 years. 



In the third year three periods are given to United States history, 

 civics, and economics, and two to literature and theme writing. The 

 nationalistic work here is commonly of high grade, but the English is 

 weak, and the whole structure rests upon insufficient foundations. 



It remains for me to suggest how the manual training idea, that 

 of learning by doing, is applied to studies apparently so abstract, for 

 undoubtedly the idea does permeate the entire English work. The 

 one effort is to give reality to the instruction and to make it arouse 

 the self-activity of the boys, to have it creative rather than merely 

 assimilative. To carry out this idea, the composition work of the first 

 year is limited to subjects in which the material can not be had from 

 books, but must result from direct personal observation and experi- 

 ence. In the second year the history and the literature are closely 

 correlated, and each lends an interest and reality to the other. Eor 

 example, when ancient history is being studied, the literature will 

 belong to that period — Plutarch's Lives, or portions of the Iliad, or 

 some of the excellent translations of Greek plays, the Alcestis of 

 Euripides, or the Antigone of Sophocles. Boys are thought not to 

 care for literature, but really they take a keen delight in the more 

 full-blooded sort. They may not care for subtleties of thought, but 

 they do care for action, and they sympathize with the strong primi- 

 tive passions of the Greek heroes. And it seems to me very whole- 

 some in these cold northern winters of ours to have the boys plunge 

 into the open sunshine, the pure animality, the sincere passion of 

 the Greek world, and return warm and invigorated. Ivanhoe, or 

 Men of Iron, is good collateral reading for mediaeval history. I have 

 known a non-book-loving boy to read Men of Iron three times in less 

 than a fortnight. Kingsley's Water Babies is a good breath of the 

 modern spirit. The American work, if I may so call the history, 

 civics, and economics of the third year, is made strong and real by 

 the use of original documents, by local illustrations, and by the study 

 of current social problems. Here, again, it all depends on the man. 

 In the hands of the unimaginative, economics is apt to become a mere 

 effort to formulate social abuses with the idea of justifying them, 

 and the boys get little inspiration out of such dreary work. • The 

 English work is still formal. The boys read Shakespeare and other 

 middle English authors, works that I have come to believe had much 

 better be left until the boys come to them privately and of their 

 own accord. 



Let us look now for a moment at the work in mathematics. In 



