First Writing Large. The first writing should be large, in full arm movements. The smaller muscles which control finger, movements are developed rather late and they should not be forced. Blackboard writing is best at the start, in letters as large as the children please to make, the larger the better. This should be followed by writing with pencils on soft paper without rules, also in large letters. The pencils should be not less than one half inch in diameter and of good length, that the children may grasp them with their hands readily, and be compelled to use their arms to write with them. This should be followed by writing between rules not less than an inch apart. Gradually the size of the letters should be reduced to the normal, still with pencils on soft paper.

The first pens used should be blunt, not sharp-pointed, to retain the free, large movements. By the third year children should be ready for ordinary pens on ruled or unruled paper.

The cry about lack of individuality in penmanship after using any particular style, as the vertical, for example, is sheer nonsense. Individuality comes later, if it is in the individual. Any style learned in school is sure to be modified later by the user.

Children can learn to write by almost any method, but loss of time in acquiring a "bookkeeper's hand" in school is serious and there are things more worth while.

CHAPTER XXII

MOTOR ACTIVITIES IN EXPRESSION

General Literacy Modern. - Time was when illiteracy was no bar against admission to good society. Not only so, but literacy was regarded as a possession of doubtful value except as the key to a trade, something on a par with that of the smith. The average knight and lord of medieval days could scarcely read, if at all. Often he could not even write his name. He could fight, he could ride, he could dance, but reading and writing he cheerfully and somewhat contemptuously turned over to his menials. It was no more necessary for him to read his songs or write his letters than to shoe his horses or polish his armor. Indeed, he was much more likely to do the latter than the former.

Have we gone too far in the opposite direction? In these days when the descendants of these same knights seek glory not on the gory field, vi et armis, but literis et stylis, in the field of letters despised of their fathers, when the public library as well as the schoolmaster is abroad, when everybody reads to his good or ill, when the blacksmith writes verses and the chambermaid novels, when the limerick contests appeal to the infant in arms do we place too high a rating upon the use of words, in comparison with the other languages of the soul? Whatever may be the answer to this question, it can hardly be doubted that in our training of the young we

have let our enthusiasm for those wonderful twin arts, which form the necessary mechanical basis for literature, close our eyes to the value of the other arts through which man expresses himself. We are word mad, and are so anxious that our youth be able to take to themselves the treasures of knowledge and thought and inspiration stored up in the world's literature that we forget to open their eyes to those other treasures, contained in the buildings, the sculpture, the paintings, the music, the machinery of the world.

On what principle of common sense can we justify this exaltation of speech, "the art of concealing thought," so far above all other forms of expression?

Value of the Doer.-In the great busy world, we value the doer, the man who expresses himself in a machine, a house, a temple, a painting, a statue, a mill, a railroad, a bank, an asylum, a lighthouse. They are the honored of all ages. But in our definition of what we call education we set up and smugly defend the little two by four image of clay which we call literacy. Then we fall down and worship it and call upon all people to bow before our little god or be sent to social perdition. A man may build factories, cities, nations, but unless he is "up" on Ibsen he is uneducated.

I am not ignorant of the many attempts to remedy this defect that have struggled for recognition for thirty years past with varying success. The "object lessons" the "manual training," the occasional attention to appreciative study of the fine arts, all are indications of a real, if vague, sense of lack in our curricula. But these efforts as yet have been sporadic and undigested and too often ephemeral.

Courses out of Balance. - We still must ask ourselves whether our courses of study are not out of balance, whether having secured the irreducible minimum of literacy, ability to read and write effectively, the remaining time should not be distributed more nearly in accordance with the values of the other matters that may be taught. We have greatly extended the average of school attendance, but the extension of work has been nearly all along one line. Do we need a reform?

Two Phases of Every Course. As stated in Chapter I, every course of study necessarily represents two phases of education: a body of knowledge to be learned, and a range of activities, to secure through expression the reactions necessary, not only to learning itself, but what is even more important, to the growth of the mind.

These two phases are naturally complementary, and hence, although the specific topic of this chapter is the latter phase, that of expression, and a single aspect of that, this brief consideration of the other phase seems to me necessary as an introduction.

All Arts Necessary. — In the economy of life all the arts have their place. He who can read the "sermons in stones" and the rest of it; he to whom Nature" speaks a various language "; he who looks with eye of appreciation upon the Taj Mahal; he who can feast his mind upon the beauties of a Venus de Melos or a Transfiguration; he who is intelligently and deeply moved by "concord of sweet sounds," surely he has a valuable education, even though his knowledge of literature be meager. And more, he who can read comprehendingly and with pleasure a locomotive, a turbine steamer, an electric lamp, a telephone, a wireless outfit, or even a compli

cated tool, a piece of furniture, a boot, a suit of clothes, has his compensations for lack of literary training. He can put himself as really into communication with the efforts of some fellow-man to express the best that is in him as by reading a poem. Truly then, when we have passed the irreducible minimum of literacy, we need to consider well whether the children should not be led to the contemplation of more varied and richer knowledges than are contained in any merely verbal record.

Range of Activities. This leads directly to the range of activities suggested for the course of study. Of what expressive arts should the child be put in possession, and why?

Why teach Arts of Expression. Why teach any arts of expression? The first reason is really subconscious. It is of the nature of instinct that children should be instructed into the modes of being and doing of the race. Hence training in expressive activities always and naturally precedes the imparting of formal knowledge and the earliest knowledge imparted is that which bears upon and illumines the activities. The educative business of the infant is to kick, to creep, to walk and talk, to cry and make up faces. Knowledge is incidental and auxiliary. For a long time he cares to know only or chiefly that which will help him directly to do something.. He learns to do many things, in imitation of his elders and to gratify his desires, while his knowledge, except as directly related to his activities, is practically nil. That is, he falls without effort into the life of the race, and begins to do his part as a member of it; for the great business of the race is to do things. Records, talk about it, are subsidiary or supplementary.