THE PHILOSOPHY OF MANUAL TRAINING. 785 



This certainly invites a willing use of the editorial blue pencil. 

 What shall we cut out under the first head, as being too abstract? 

 I should say all mathematics, all systematic history and civil gov- 

 ernment, all grammar (this would exclude the classics), and all 

 mechanical drawing. Under the second class, studies involved else- 

 where or better learned by implication, I would cut out formal 

 spelling, formal writing, and formal political geography. I seriously 

 propose, then, and I ask your very serious consideration of the 

 proposition, to cut out mathematics, history, civil government, gram- 

 mar, classics, mechanical drawing, spelling, writing, and political 

 geography — almost the whole equipment of an elementary school. 

 We have left of the old curriculum only the speaking, reading, 

 and writing of English, and of French or German; the study of 

 science (preferably not physiology), and free-hand drawing. This 

 fragment, poor as it may seem to you at first, could yet be made the 

 material of a rich culture. When you add to this the cultivation of 

 the body, and the faculties of touch, sight, hearing, smell, taste, 

 speech and movement, and the acquisition of those accomplishments 

 which from their organic nature must be learned, if at all, in child- 

 hood, such as instrumental music and singing, you will find that 

 the days will be more than full — full not of weariness, but of delight. 

 The studies which I have so mercilessly cut out from the curriculum 

 may safely be left to the high school, and some of them left out alto- 

 gether. Should Jack or Margaret fail to reach the high school, I 

 am still very strongly of the ojiinion that the acquisition of those 

 accomplishments and powers that I have here suggested would enrich 

 their lives with a graciousness and success that could never have been 

 extracted from the old studies. 



Let us look at this new curriculum. To speak English correctly 

 in a clear, pleasant voice, to read it intelligently and agreeably, to 

 write it plainly and without ambiguity — this in itself would be a 

 liberal culture, which few of us attain to. But the end is not yet. 

 Think of what is involved in our reading. We can read stories of 

 our country, of the men and women who have made it great; we 

 can read descriptions of colonies and explorations, and later states, 

 we can read its best and most stirring literature; and we can do all 

 this in the presence of pictures of the men and women and places, 

 and of maps of the lands, and can get a deeper and more human 

 knowledge of America than could be gained by any amount of un- 

 emotional history and civil government and geography. In the same 

 vivid way we can study the history, geography, and civilization of 

 other times and places, not as something to be mechanically learned, 

 but as something to be experienced, something to lay hold upon our 

 sentiment and affect our life. 



