At the outset, your Committee found it necessary to investigate a number of difficult questions, all of which had a practical bearing upon the definition of a Course of Study, its extent, and the relations of its several parts. In most instances these questions were suggested by real collisions shown to exist between the views held by the expounders of the various educational systems established in this country.

A brief review of these questions is essential as a preliminary introduction to the grounds which have influenced your committee in the recommendations which they venture to make.

1. The first question relates to the proper beginning of a course of study; at what age should the pupil be admitted to school? Upon this depends, in a large measure, the character of the studies and the temper of the discipline in the primary school. It is important here to consider the modifying effects of climate and the nature of parental training at home. In the Northern sections of the country, children may attend school one or two years earlier than in the Southern sections. A child may be safely placed in school at the age of five, or even less in the cooler climates, and assigned the ordinary tasks in reading and arithmetic at once, while in warm climates he must begin school at six or seven years of age, or if earlier, his tasks must be of a less severe character and not so prolonged.

To some of your committee the Kindergarten has commended itself as a desirable beginning of the primary course. At the age of five years, possibly at four, the child may be brought under its training. The principal objects aimed at in the Kindergarten course of instruction are-(1.) Skill in the recognition and production of forms. The hand and eye are disciplined in the most effective manner by the several occupations of cutting out shapes in paper, weaving patterns in different colors, perforating card-board and working pictures in colored threads, construction of geometrical and other figures by means of sticks and softened peas, modelling of designs in clay, ruling paper, and drawing symmetrical figures. (2.) The theoretical knowledge of form and number, is trained by the use of blocks representing the elementary geometrical solids; counting, the elementary rules of arithmetic, the use of fractions, are taught by means of these blocks. (3.) Besides this, the child is taught valuable lessons in manners. He eats his lunch at the table spread in a proper manner, and learns neatness, cleanliness, and the conventional etiquette that marks polite behavior at meals. (4.) In the games which are played, the imagination is exercised in a lively manner, and the healthful training of the body is secured. The session of the Kindergarten usually lasts for about three hours per day, and may continue for one or two or three years, according to the age of the pupil upon entrance. It is to be remarked that the element of play is not so prominent a characteristic of the Kindergarten as is claimed by some of its advocates. Moreover, the nurture of the child's individuality and originality of character, which is obtained in play, is not to be expected from the play that is permitted in the Kindergarten, so much as in the untrammelled exercise of his faculties when outside of the school-room. Play involves a negative exercise of the will in caprice and destructiveness that is essential, no doubt, to the develop

ment of the feeling of independence and original power which forms the basis of character. But the school must always direct the pupil's efforts into special rational channels of activity, and hence act as a restraining influence upon the untamed will. The Kindergarten restrains, though in the gentlest manner possible. It furnishes a training nearest approaching that of the family; and is the proper transition from family to school. A year spent in cultivating manual skill, and in the acquirement of a familiar knowledge of geometrical form and numerical computation, as well as a training in polite habits and usages at so early an age, must be a powerful influence in moulding the future life of the child.

2. Where the Kindergarten does not precede the ordinary course of primary instruction, the first studies of the course are reading, writing, and arithmetic.

The second difficult question that met your committee in their investigation was to determine the precise value of these and other elementary studies both as regards discipline of mind obtained in their acquirement, and the usefulness to the individual in gaining further knowledge. It was necessary to compare one branch of study with another. While some educational writers contend that the art of drawing, or oral lessons in natural science are of more real importance than reading and writing, or arithmetic, others contend that the latter studies are of a fundamental character, altogether unique and not to be compared with the former for the reason that these studies (reading and arithmetic) are of universal use and value, while such studies as drawing and the natural sciences are special in their character. The arts of reading and writing enable their possessor to participate in the treasured wisdom of the race. Without them he can gain knowledge only through his own senses and the oral tradition of his companions. By the aid of reading and writing he can avail himself of the senses of all mankind in all ages of the world and transmit his own contribution to the race in turn. By arithmetic, he is able to measure the quantity of the world about him, at least as far as he can reduce it to number. Deprive man of the power of counting and calculating, and the world of things recedes into a vague and uncertain relation to him so that his power over it diminishes to zero. With numerical calculation he can divide and conquer it—he can rule matter by spiritual might; without this art his relation to the world is that of the savage to his fetish.

In whatever form this question has been viewed by your committee, the paramount value of reading, writing, and arithmetic over all other branches in the course of study has been manifest.

The most useful studies do

But this has not fully decided the question. not of necessity altogether exclude less useful studies.

3. Here, accordingly, your committee met another difficulty, to-wit:how to decide the amount of prominence to be given to industrial branches in comparison with those chiefly productive of theoretical culture.

That which seems to lie nearest to the realm of usefulness to the indidividual is his special trade or vocation. His culture-studies are not so directly useful, but are useful at more points in his life and for a greater period of time. In late years we have seen the whole course of study

challenged. The primary school has been called upon to fit the pupil for the actual demands of life. The college and university have been asked to dispense with certain of their disciplinary studies and adopt others of greater immediate usefulness. Less Latin and Greek and more Science of Nature and Man, has been the demand. The Course of Study has received great modifications; the number of elective branches has been increased. Still the proper adjustment between culture-studies and practical studies does not seem to have been found. Now that education, as an element of national strength, has excited so much attention and become the object of so frequent legislation, we are the more perplexed by this problem. Indeed there are many problems here.

4. The question of public and private schools meets us first. On the one hand it is contended in the interest of productive industry, that the public schools, being for the masses who are destined to fill the ranks of common laborers, should give a semi-technical education, and avoid purely disciplinary studies. The latter should be reserved (it is thought) for academies and preparatory schools founded by private enterprise and open to such of the community as can afford to patronize them. This means a division in the course of study-one branch of it tending towards the arts and trades-the education of the laboring classes; the other branch tending towards high culture-" a liberal education," as it is called. This important question, therefore, met your committee in this shape: Is the best course of study for the future common laborer, a part or portion of the longer course of study designed to educate the professional man? Is the complete course of study the same for culture and business and the professions, so that whatever section of it be cut off from the beginning, furnishes the best course up to that point, whether regarded as preparatory to a continuation of the course of study, or as a completed course fitting one for business? To settle this point it was essential to consider in detail the nature and effects of such differences in the course of study as had come to exist in our educational systems, and especially the tendency to separate the preparatory course for colleges and universities from that pursued in the common schools.

The course of study as originally planned for our colleges was a continuation of that in the so-called "Grammar School" in which Latin grammar was the most important branch of the curriculum. The common-school course was very meagre, and that of the grammar school and college was well enough as a continuation of it. At that time very little development had taken place in the sciences of nature and man; English literature had not yet become a great power among the people; the printed page in the form of the newspaper and magazine had not yet opened to the individual the great possibilities of continuing his theoretic education. What was then a "liberal education" is inferior to a common education now. Although higher education demands only the same disciplinary studies as preparatory to it, that it did formerly, merely increasing the amount, and has recognized the modern growth of literature and science and history by additions to the end of its course, in the common school so much has been added to the disciplinary studies as completely to change the course. The branches which initiate the

pupil into the sciences of man and nature are better and better provided for year by year. The curriculum is continually modified so as to adapt it more fully to the wants of the individual in this epoch. But the higher education has yielded far less to the demands of the age. It has succeeded in repelling the collateral and information-giving studies from its preparatory course, and it admits them only in the form of a supplement at the close of the course.*

The course of the common school tends to take the pupil through the elements of the collateral studies before his preparation for college, while the course of the college and its special feeders, the academies and classical schools, does not reach those studies until after five to seven years' apprenticeship in the purely disciplinary studies is completed.

In

This difference appears most marked in the course of the public high school, as contrasted with that of the special preparatory schools. the district school are taught reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, grammar, and history of the United States. In the course of study in the public high school, we find Latin and Greek, French and German, algebra, geometry, natural philosophy, physical geography, physiology, universal history, English literature and rhetorical work. But a preparation for college usually omits all except the Latin, Greek, and mathematics. Hence the public high school is obliged to provide for a classical course and a general course, if it would continue the common-school course and

*The Forty-Eighth annual report of the President of Harvard College announced certain changes in the requirements for admission to that university which indicated very clearly a perception of the difficulty herein described. A better preparation in English literature, natural science, and modern languages (French or German) was required. Upon this the report remarks as follows:

"In all changes in the preparatory course of study which have been here set forth, the single aim of the Faculty has been to make that course correspond more nearly with the best possible course of study for young men, up to an average age of eighteen, who propose to pursue nonprofessional studies for four years more. As the learning given in American colleges has been predominantly classical and mathematical, it is not surprising that the proficiency of a candidate in Classics and in Mathematics has been the point chiefly considered in examinations for admission. That teachers and pupils in preparatory schools should direct their efforts mainly to meeting these specific demands of the colleges, and should subordinate the intrinsic importance of studies to their serviceableness in securing admission to college, is the only result that could be expected. Neither teacher nor pupil could be much blamed, for instance, for practically setting the writing of good Latin above the writing of good English. It is plain that the only remedy for this grave evil is for the colleges to show by the nature of their admission examinations that they will not accept the rudiments of scholarship as amends for deficiencies in the rudiments of education. The colleges, as the representatives of the value of the study of the Classics, should be especially careful not to give plausibility by any act or neglect of theirs to the groundless assumption that the discipline of mind secured by the preliminary classical training must be purchased by the sacrifice of some knowledge which a well-educated young man of eighteen ought to possess. Co-operation on the part of the leading colleges is much needed in enforcing upon teachers, and in enabling them to enforce upon their pupils, the necessity of thorough training in all the elements of a sound education. As soon as those colleges unite in demanding of candidates for admission a thoroughly good training in English no less than in classical subjects, the schools which feed the colleges will in turn be able to exact from the lower schools an efficiency which they now greatly lack. The service which American colleges could thus indirectly render to American education it is difficult to overestimate. Were a good degree of proficiency in a well-constructed course of English studies strictly enforced as a condition of admission into our leading colleges, the quality of education received by all pupils in all schools directly or remotely affected by such action would be sensibly improved. Hitherto a too exclusive concern for proper preliminary training in the Classics and Mathematics has cut off the higher institutions for education in this country from a part of that influence upon the lower which it is both their interest and their duty to exercise."

at the same time prepare its pupils for college. The influence of higher education upon the lower is to force the latter to drop its collateral and information-giving studies.

Meanwhile the demand of the age upon the college to curtail its disciplinary and culture-studies, and to give more prominence to the natural sciences is met only by the increase of these branches in the latter part of the course, as well as by the establishment of scientific schools separate from the regular philosophical course; when these separate schools require as a condition of admission to them the completion of the regular college course, they do not fulfil in a direct manner the popular demand; when they admit pupils without such preparation, they omit the culture and discipline which they claim to be essential to success in the pursuit of higher science.

5. In view of these facts your committee proceed next to consider the question of classical culture. Are Latin and Greek essential to a course of study that shall give thorough discipline to the powers of the mind? What special advantage to culture is derived from the study of Latin and Greek over that derived from the study of Modern Languages-say French and German? That these ancient languages have no advantages as regards their form or capability of expression-one may convince himself by comparison. But when it is remembered that English-speaking peoples derive from a Teutonic source only those words expressive of special and familiar relations and ideas, while for all the fine shades of thought and generalization. they resort to the Latin and Greek vocabulary, it will easily be seen how important is a direct knowledge of those tongues to us if we would understand readily the language of thought, and express with ease the results of reflection and generalization.

The scientific method prevailing in our time tells us that to know a subject properly we must study it in its history. We must be acquainted with its embryology and growth. In this insight we have also a clue to the nature of the much prized disciplinary value of classic study. The classics of a people include the earlier writings belonging to the period of the evolution of its civilization. A study of its classics places one in possession of the seeds and elementary phases which have expanded and grown into its later life. The civilization not only of the Anglo-Saxon people, but of the Romanic, Teutonic, Sclavonic, and Celtic peoples of Europe is a Roman and Greek civilization. Greece and Rome originated the stock of ideas that form the basis of our institutions. The Greek mind explored the domain of theoretic and æsthetic culture, and science draws its categories to-day from the Greek language; while art points to Greek literature and Greek sculpture and architecture for perfect models. What culture we have in these directions cannot be well acquired by the individual nor fully comprehended by him without recourse to its original fountains. Rome furnished the organizing forms of our civilization; and our jurisprudence and legislation still pronounce their edicts in Roman words; and the form of our institutions in which we live and move and have our being as a civil community- -as a State, a municipality, a corporation, a free citizen endowed with rights—is Roman. To know ourselves, to realize our past history, and to make alive within ourselves the consciousness of the development of