1014 The American Naturalist. [December, 
EDITORIALS. 
EDITORS, E. D. COPE AND J. 8. KINGSLEY. 
—Tuer Association of Colleges in New England is taking a good 
step in its discussion of the following proposed changes in the courses 
of study in the grammar schools: 
1. The introduction of elementary natural history into the earlier 
years of the program as a substantial subject, to be taught by demon- 
strations and practical exercises rather than from books. 
2. The introduction of elementary physics into the later years of 
the program as a substantial subject, to be taught by the experimental 
or laboratory method, and to include exact weighing and measuring 
by the pupils themselves. 
3. The introduction of elementary algebra at an age not later than 
twelve years. 
4, The introduction of elementary plane geometry at an age not 
later than thirteen years. 
5. The offering of the opportunity to study French, German, or 
Latin, or any two of these languages from and after the age of ten 
years. 
As it has been in the past, the whole course of instruction in the 
much-praised New England common schools has been such as to 
repress the individuality and to discourage the observational powers 
of the pupil. The curriculum has apparently been devised to teach 
a lot of diffiċult arithmetical puzzles of no practical value and to 
encumber the young minds with a lot of abstruse grammatical rules 
which they must learn, parrot-like, but which they cannot understand 
until they are more mature. So to gain time for these new subjects, surely 
as valuable to the ordinary person as cube root or the rules of p: L 
and the definition of “a conditional, subjunctive, dependent sone” 
it is proposed to take from the time usually allotted to arithmeli® 
geography, and grammar. : 
That the change will be made without considerable opposition 18 pe 
to be expected, for the present teachers of our grammar schools are 
not prepared to teach by the observational method. Were 1t merely 
demanded that the instructor should hear the students repeat by 
rote the statéments in some trashy “Fourteen Weeks” text w 
there would be little trouble. They could handle that as they 4° 
