878 REPORT— 1903. 



givea weekly ia each form to each subject in the curriculam ; and issue an outline 

 of its course (or courses) of study, showing the standard which it proposes to reach 

 at each stage in each class. 



(j) Behind all consideration of curricula, there must lie an ideal of character 

 and of the kind of intellectual power which we desire the rising generation of 

 English men and women to reach. 



ii. i?y Professor J. Adams, M.A., B.Sc. 

 1. Groups of Essential Suhjects. 



The subjects that all children should study iu common fall naturally into four 

 groups, (rt) The three R's, as the necessary preliminary to all formal study; 

 {b) English composition and drawing as means of expression ; (c) Drill, some form 

 of manual work, singing, and the rudimentary laws of health ; {d) Nature study, 

 geography, and picturesque history and biography. 



2. Literati/ and Practical Subjects, \ 



While all training should include both theoretical and practical instruction, the 

 nature of the subjects to be taught and the amount of tinie to be devoted to each 

 must vary with the stage of advancement of the pupil. In a well-equipped school 

 with a good staff and small classes, the greater part of the formal teaching of the 

 three R's could cease at the age of ten, though occasional formal lessons, parti- 

 cularly in arithmetic, should be provided up to the age of twelve. With regard 

 to the other subjects of common study there is no need that they sliould ever be 

 dropped, though the form in which they are cirried on and the material upon 

 which the mind is exercised may be changed. Geography and history, for 

 example, may altogether change their character as school subjects, and yet the 

 lessons of the earlier stage may retain their value. The subjects thus do not 

 merely change, they develop. Nature study may be given up entirely in favour of 

 .systematic botany or physiology or chemistry, but it leaves behind it its mass 

 of knowledge with the corresponding bias townrds scientific method. 



The literary part of the curriculum should be made as general as possible, that 

 is, as free as may be from specitic applications to professional purposes. English 

 composition need not by any means become tainted in school with the peculiar 

 terms of the counting-house. The vocabulary and idiom of the different professions 

 can be very readily picked up by an intelligent pupil who knows good English. 

 The reading of what is known as literature is the best possible preparation for all 

 sorts of professions that require the power of expression. 



French and German should be treated 07i the same principle. It is easy to 

 make fun of the boy preparing for the counting-house by puzzling his way through 

 !i German passage dealing with goslings and golden hair. But there is, after all, 

 only one German language, and it is better that it should be approached on the 

 human side rather than the commercial. The first essential is that the pupil should 

 leave school with the power of reading easily and intelligently the foreign 

 languages he has studied. To attain this end he must have read widely during 

 his course. Nothing can make up for the lack of wide reading. Composition in 

 the foreign language is an admirable culture training, leading to the corresponding 

 practical advantage of facility in writing. The commercial pupil must acquire the 

 power of composing in the foreign language, but this is less essential in the case of 

 the scientific pupil, though of course highly desirable. 



The same tbing is true about mathematics. In order that each class of 

 student should be able to make the proper application to his own subject, all the 

 pupils must study mathematics in general. The domestic, scientific, and commercial 

 professions all demand a knowledge of mathematics in some form or other. In the 

 case of the literary professions it is not essential that mathematics should be 

 studied in any great detail. Some geometry and algebra treated in the broadest 



