886 REPORT— 1903. 



merely ; no text-book, however good, will suffice in itself. The teacher must have 

 actual experience of business. 



The French and German must also beo^in to take a special bias. The language 

 itself must be used as the vehicle of teaching ; a complete series of letters should 

 from time to time be written completing a transaction between an English and a 

 foreign firm ; and the composition should be what is called ' free composition ' 

 rather than literary translation. 



In History the first year should be given to the history of the world, and then 

 in the second year work over the same ground again, studying it from the special 

 economic point of view. 



Geography must also now become a world-subject, and no longer an affair of 

 separate countries. It will begin with examining the world-distributions of 

 temperature, pressure, wind, and rainfall, with the causes that produce them ; the 

 sea currents as they affect climate. This opens up the question of economic 

 vegetation and the distribution of animals. Next come minerals and coal. And 

 then, as the resultant of all these circumstances, comes the population. For all 

 this work special maps are required ; the Cxeographical Association provides some 

 excellent slides. After this comes regional geography of the geographical areas. 

 The region is first defined by emphasising the relief of the area under treatment 

 with rough accounts of structure, climate, and vegetation, and population as 

 before, vyith the special reasons which have caused the gp'owth of certain towns. 

 Then comes the question of routes within the area, as based on relief and water 

 system, and last of all trade routes and trade relationships with other countries, 

 transit, cable routes, and all communications. 



Economics should not come till the second year, and they should be common- 

 sense and practical thinking about the most obvious phenomena of our social life. 



A high mathematical standard should be insisted upon for entry to the 

 commercial department. The arithmetic cannot be done without it. Also, a boy 

 should have, before going into business, some knowledge of the chemistry of 

 common life and merchantable objects, of the mechanics and the main motor 

 powers used in manufacture. 



The Enylish should be as little as possible formal or pliilological. The com- 

 position should arise out of the teaching, but it will not be by any means confined 

 to the English class. The history, geography, and economics will all involve 

 essay writing. The composition should not be all written, every commercial 

 course should include practice in speaking, but this can hardly be a class subject, 

 it should find its free and spontaneous scope in the school debating society. 



ii. By W. C. Pletcheb, M.A. 



It should not be forgotten that in discussion of curricula — still more, of course, 

 in their enforcement — conclusions must not be sharply defined, and that behind 

 any curriculum lies a much more important matter — the personality of the teacher. 



• 1. Knoioledge for its own Sake. 



Utility is no guide. Kot that utility is objectionable as extremists have urged, 

 but that it is unattainable. Of no conceivable subject in a school curriculum 

 other than reading, writing, and the bare elements of arithmetic, can it truly be 

 asserted that it will be ' useful ' to all, or even to any considerable fraction of the 

 whole number of children. 



2. Faculties to be Develo2)ed. 



After the bare elements, the absence of which distinguishes the legal ' illiterate ' 

 from the rest of the community, the essentials to be secured, if possible, are : 

 (1) the power of accurately following thought properly expressed; (2) the power 

 of thinking accurately oneself ; and (3) — which can perhaps hardly be separated 



