786 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



I believe that this sentiment study of the English language 

 should be the foundation stone of modern education. In a smaller 

 measure, but in the same spirit, a modern foreign language may be 

 taken up and entered into and possessed, and especially if but one be 

 taken up at a time. I have omitted spelling, writing, and geography 

 from this new curriculum, because they are better taught as in- 

 volved in the other work. Spelling at best is a mechanical virtue. 

 I happen myself to be a good speller, but the hours I spent with the 

 spelling-book were numbered. I have learned to spell because much 

 reading has familiarized me with the appearance of words, and I 

 happen to have a visual type of memory. I recognize words now 

 much as I do maple or oak leaves, and with as little difficulty. I 

 am disposed to think that the testimony of others would be similar to 

 mine. In the same way it is hardly worth while to have a separate 

 copy book when all the written language work should be an exercise 

 in writing, or a separate atlas when all reading involving places is 

 done in the presence of a large map. This is what I mean by cut- 

 ting out studies that are better taught by implication. And in de- 

 fense of this suggestion, I would call your attention to the fact 

 that the best things of life — courtesy and morality and taste and 

 religion — are not formalized. They are taught by implication and 

 by example. 



The science work offers another fine chance for correlation. It 

 should be thoroughly of the surface, and should have to do with the 

 tangible things that interest children, plants and animals and stones, 

 as they touch human life. JSTo skeletons, no systems, no schemes of 

 classification, but fiesh and blood and realities all the time. The fatal 

 blight on nearly all elementary pedagogical work is our passion for 

 systematizing, a passion doomed to disappointment, and the fore- 

 runner of many dreary failures. One can only classify when one has 

 a lot of material. The children haven't this. They must first get it. 

 The quest will occupy them at least up to the high school. The sci- 

 ence work had much better begin with some observational and in a 

 large way experimental branch, such as physiography. Physiology is 

 not superficial enough, and can not be well taught in the absence of 

 an elementary knowledge of physics and chemistry. 



The drawing, which I would have entirely free hand, is most 

 valuable when used as a means for the expression of the child's own 

 ideas. Let him draw what he likes, and let the teacher help merely 

 in the method of representation, and then chiefly by suggestion. 

 But these ideas, I am glad to say, are already being worked out in 

 some of our schools. You may have seen the curious pictures that 

 children make of soldiers marching, or of a ball game, or you may 

 have been amazed at their original conceptions of animals and In- 



