64 ILLINOIS STATE ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 



guages can give the insight into the structure and use of 

 our own mother tongue as do these root languages of 

 English. 



2. Rhetoric and English Literature. Accuracy in lan- 

 guages and fluency in his mother tongue should be the 

 first marks of any educated person. 



3. Mathematics. The rigorous training in exactness, 

 the wide scope for development of originality in problem 

 solving can perhaps be surpassed by no other study. 



4. Physics or Chemistry. I have selected the exact 

 sciences rather than Botany or Zoology, not only because 

 they are fundamental to later work in any field of science, 

 but primarily for their greater emphasis on exactness 

 and their consequent higher value as discipline. 



Time might also be found for a certain amount of his- 

 tory, though I do not consider it as well adapted to the 

 purpose as those above. Moreover, a pupil who has had 

 the vigorous training of the above schedule could ac- 

 quire all the history he might reasonably be supposed to 

 desire in the reading which the spare time of his first 

 year out of school could provide. 



It is quite possible that such a program could only be 

 put into effect by selecting the upper one-fourth in an 

 entering class and furthermore, the success of the whole 

 undertaking would depend upon the training of the teach- 

 ers who undertook it. 



The day may never dawn when the program which I 

 have outlined will find its exact counterpart in any school 

 in this land, but I am firmly convinced that if our much 

 boasted free education is not to become as valueless as it 

 is free, we must return to the principle of fundamentals 

 first ; we must demand mental discipline in place of pur- 

 blind memorizing, must exalt thoroughness above sciol- 

 ism. 



