for help in administering it. A course that a teacher can keep in his desk and follow satisfactorily by occasional references to it is a feeble course indeed.

A good course necessarily rests upon science and philosophy, both psychological and sociological, and should continually refer the teachers to these sources for an explanation of its principles, and should require of them professional research and study, — for such study is the teacher's vital breath.

A course of study should also demand for its administration a fair amount of general culture, and should make necessary constant excursions by the teacher into the fields of science, history, and literature, for these excursions mean personal growth.

Body of Knowledge and Range of Activities. - As education consists in growth, through nutrition and exercise, that is, through the acquisition of knowledge and through expression - receiving and producing, import and export — the course should make provision for both these processes. It should provide or suggest a body of knowledge and a range of activities. The former calls for knowledge on the part of the teacher, the latter for the free exercise of judgment and initiative.

The field of prescription is mainly limited to the body of knowledge and indeed to the main and fundamental facts within it.

The field of suggestion and inspiration is largely in the expressive work of the school. As expression makes knowledge vital, the range of activities is the vitalizing part of the course of study. It is not enough that a course state that the work in history for the fifth grade shall cover so many pages of such and such books, or that it

shall include certain named topics; it should both suggest more topics than can be pursued, and should throw as many side lights as possible upon the subjects; should indicate sources of information, and should point out possible correlations with other branches of study; it should suggest methods of approach and various means of illustration. Especially should it show how impressions may be deepened and clarified by the employment of the various arts of expression, as the writing of stories and representation with pencil or brush and by construction. In short, it should not only indicate the subject matter to be taught, properly classified, but should also open the eyes of the teacher to all possible means for making the teaching effective, that, his imagination being stimulated, he may choose or originate the best available instruments and methods. If, however, these things are prescribed, that very fact makes them mechanical and impairs or destroys their efficiency.

Here is the opportunity of the superintendent, in making the course, to do his highest work, and for the teacher, while following it, to do his highest work.

Résumé. A course of study has two main purposes: to preserve the unity of the school system, and to serve as a guide to the individual teacher. For both these ends it should be mandatory and prescriptive as to fundamentals, but broad, free, suggestive, and stimulating as to details and methods.

The course should require the teacher to study, both for a comprehension of its principles, and for culture.

It should be based upon a body of knowledge, and should indicate a range of activities. Prescription belongs chiefly to the former, freedom to the latter.

But throughout the course, the spirit and aim must be manifest. If the aim is to perfect the machine, to enable the children to obtain " promotion " by passing a formal examination, that should be made evident at every step, so that the teacher may direct his efforts successfully and waste none on iridescent dreams. But if the aim is really the growth of children individually into knowledge, power, and civic righteousness, the course of study should make that truth plain at every step, that the teacher may be inspired by the high aim, and may take account of the individual status and needs of the children.

CHAPTER II

READING

1. FUNCTION OF THE READING LESSON

The Value of Reading. Doubtless arithmetic in its simpler processes satisfies a more elemental human need than does reading. The illiterate often can perform accurately the operations upon numbers required for the commoner business transactions. Indeed they must do so if they are to enter into even the simple economic relations necessary to making a living. Whereas reading, though vastly useful, is not essential to such relations. This is further shown by the fact that not so many years ago the great majority of successful men, even the very rich and powerful, could not read at all. But manifestly they could and did compute.

Notwithstanding this fact, it is still true that reading makes possible the satisfaction, certainly of higher human needs, and probably of a larger number, than does arithmetic. Consider the limitations of him who cannot read. How small is his field, how narrow his horizon, how restricted his outlook. The limits of his vision and the length and strength of his legs bound his world. He knows what his senses tell him immediately, and the only supplement to his knowledge derived from the actual contact with things comes through the spoken word, the uncertainties of oral recital. Without the art

of recording thoughts in symbols and the twin art of translating the symbols again into thoughts, man has no past but a vague and brief shadow, and no present beyond the encircling horizon observed from the near-by hilltop.

But teach him to read, and lo! his horizon is lost in infinity. All the past is his, and all the present. He may enter at once the glorious democracy of letters. The great of all ages, poets, sages, seers, may be his friends and associates. He may pace the academe with Plato, may listen to the inescapable questions of Socrates. The verses of Hafiz, the gentle speech of Buddha, the laws of Moses, the songs of Homer, of Dante, of Goethe, and the dramas of Shakespeare, all are his. He may live over again the wanderings and sacrifice of Abraham, the conquests and defeats of Cyrus and of Cæsar, of Charlemagne and of Bonaparte, of Nelson and of Washington, may enter into the struggles and triumphs of Galileo, of Newton, and of Humboldt, of Columbus, of Magellan, and of Cortez, - and all because he can read.

Truly, not even gold, that magical key, can open the doors to so many treasure houses, so many gardens of delight, such a paradise of choice spirits, as this common art of reading, the chief of all arts; and this wonderful key is offered to every boy and every girl at the price of a little toil.

Unfortunately, many who are given the key never use it to possess themselves of the treasures within their reach. Why is this? What can the schools do to bring a larger number of children into full and conscious possession of their noble heritage? How shall reading