On the map of South America she has committed to memory the different countries belonging to that great peninsula, and repeated fifty-eight chief towns and thirtythree of the principal rivers, and answered thirty-nine questions corresponding with its geography.

Let no one say hereafter that females cannot learn, for that is an assertion without foundation.

Elizabeth is a living proof to the contrary, and she merits the approbation and encouragement of her parents and friends.

MORRISTOWN, N. J., March 8th, 1826.

(Signed) P. WARDEN.

Elizabeth Crane's curriculum evidently included geography and arithmetic, and certainly reading. This is no long array of subjects, yet I submit that Elizabeth's curriculum was crowded with too many tables and boundaries, peninsulas and capes. We are comforted, however, by the thought that Elizabeth demonstrated a fact of value to her sex in the discovery that "females can learn."

The old idea that memory is the only faculty to be trained, that the mind is to be stored with facts solely for future use and without reference to present significance to the child, has not yet wholly disappeared. Much of the present criticism of the curriculum is based upon the memory idea. But the accumulated wealth of civilization has become too great for the memory alone. The children are heirs to a very large estate. We can show them the entrance, and for a little while we can serve as guides, but the main thing is to inspire them with a desire to continue its exploration and give them power to use its resources. One of the recent utterances upon this subject is as follows:

"I am fully convinced that the most urgent need of our public-school system today is more thorough work in elementary subjects, such as language, arithmetic, history, and geography. The truth must be faced," says the writer, "that these subjects are neglected in the everlasting, never-ceasing pushing of a child into the higher grades. . . . . The craze for enriched curriculum is indulged in at the expense of essential drill in the so-called common branches."

There is, no doubt, much truth in the statement that faulty syntax, bad spelling, inaccurate work in arithmetic abound. It has always been thus. School children have always made mistakes, and they always will. Education is a life-work, and we hope, also, a work for the life to come. Even in 1826 the memory, "that capacious storehouse of mankind,” had its limits. Elizabeth Crane, it will be observed, "defined the boundaries of twelve of the United States." There were at that time twenty-four in all; therefore, in boundaries we shall mark Elizabeth but 50 per cent. We are unable to determine P. Warden's standard in the matter of tables and rivers, cities, lakes, bays and gulfs, peninsulas and capes, as it is not quite certain how many had been discovered and explored at that time. But I think we may be satisfied that Elizabeth's attainments in these other highly important items were at least commendable. It is safe to

assume that every bay and peninsula of any respectability engaged the attention of this industrious New Jersey maiden.

In these days we have found it sufficient to know where to find some of these important items of information. Memory is only a good beast. of burden. What we want is strength of mind and character, good judgment, power to do and disposition to do. The good school will train its pupils to remember, because without your facts you cannot carry on your train of thought. You must have facts, but the great work is to train to use facts in effective thinking and expression. The school of today does not seek so much to get set answers to questions as to get questions asked. It aims to secure vigorous, interested effort, to make the mind strong rather than full. To that end it places before teacher and pupil a curriculum which is quite extensive, since varied needs must be met. The school must do much more for some children than for others, because the home does less. The school must furnish the fund of useful information which the home fails to give. It must restrain selfishness and develop self-control. It must erect barriers against unwholesome influences. It must do these things, or they will remain undone. In many instances the school has to stand for so many of these things that the sum of education which the children receive is much less than that possessed by the normal child of the same age or grade who comes from a good home.

Within certain limits the teacher decides what typical portions of the work outlined are most needed by the pupils under her care. No one else can tell so well. Individuality must be known as well as present attainment in the particular work. The curriculum is a guide to the selection and sequence of material, rather than a prescribed amount to be done. No matter what mechanical devices we may employ as schemes of classification and promotion and short intervals between classes, as in the present highly developed graded system, our pupils pass along, some faster, some slower, but no two getting exactly the same benefit. Each takes what he is capable of assimilating, and no more, and he cannot take it before he is at the proper stage of mental growth. By trying to get him to do so we waste time that might be more profitably spent. It is right here that the crowding occurs.

The trouble is, not that the newer studies have been added, but that some of the older ones have not sufficiently given way. We have been pruning away at arithmetic for the last ten years and have dropped out some of its useless applications, but we still devote too much time to it in the early years, and accomplish in the eight years what might be easily done in the last four. This is partly the fault of the makers of the course of study, and partly the fault of the compulsion practiced by public opinion, which still regards a knowledge of arithmetic as a necessary preparation for earning a livelihood, and therefore insists upon our teaching long division to infants and cube root to those who will never use it.

Arithmetic is of value chiefly for its logical elements. Training for mere facility is a waste of time. There is no advantage in the limited facility acquired in school. The small Italian fruit vender, thru street practice alone, can do much better than our well-drilled schoolboy. He gains his facility in purposeful practice in a very short time. Our grammargrade boys cannot work with the rapidity and accuracy required in a bank. You cannot. I cannot. But once actually have it to do, and how quickly the mechanical skill is acquired!

I would say, then, that the curriculum is overcrowded by whatever it contains that lacks wholly the element of present use to the child. The time to learn the table of linear measure is when it is needed in constructive work of present value from the child's standpoint. Then he remembers it without endless drill. There is no virtue certainly in needless drill. The time can be far better occupied.

We read that in 1826 Elizabeth Crane "deposited in her memory for future use the multiplication and other arithmetical tables." There is much of this work going on today, not only in arithmetic, but in other subjects, and just to the extent that such purposeless work is done, or work with a purpose so far in the future as to be out of touch with the child's life, just to that extent is the curriculum overcrowded.

The demand for thoroness in elementary subjects is reasonable and ought to be heeded, but the demand must be interpreted with due regard to the maturity of the student. The graduate student in the university devotes his attention to a very few things, sometimes to a single branch of one subject. Here thoroness is a reasonable expectation. But, in the lower primary grades of the public schools, we shall not secure thoroness by limiting the child to a narrow curriculum, nor in any other way, and simply because his brain has not arrived at that state that makes thoroness possible. Thoroness in the child's early school years is a physical impossibility. His interests are varied, but not deep; therefore, in the early years the curriculum may properly be quite comprehensive as to topics. As we go up in the grades, however, and have minds more and more mature to deal with, there is a constant approach to thoroness accompanied by a narrowing of the curriculum. The child in the upper grammar grades studies fewer subjects than the child in the grades below, but he goes deeper. In the high school he is restricted to three or four subjects, but he has by this time gained sufficient power of concentration to be able to hold himself to the work. Later, when he has reached the university, his brain has become so good a physical instrument that his work can be narrowed still further. He is then prepared to select some one thing for a life-work.

The curriculum, from the kindergarten to the university, may be compared to a pyramid, with the kindergarten at the base and the graduate school of the university at the apex. From the base upward there is a

gradual narrowing in subject-matter with increase of thoroness till the apex is reached, at which point only can absolute thoroness be expected. A curriculum thus arranged may seem crowded; but, if so, the fault lies with those who administer it.

Because children, tho classed together, come to the school with such varying amounts of general information; because they represent such extremes in their mental furniture, a closely prescriptive curriculum, just extensive enough for classes in one portion of a city, might be quite unsuited to classes of the same grade in another portion of the same city. There must be as many courses of study as there are essential differences in population, or else there must be one course extensive enough to meet varying needs. The tendency has been toward the second of these plans. Selection of material must be based, not only upon a full knowledge of present attainment of the class to be taught, but also upon facilities at hand for teaching one topic rather than another.

This selective work presupposes a skillful teacher, but often the novice or the unskillful teacher is our only resource. This will continue to be so until our teaching force is recruited from the ranks of pupils now in schools receiving instruction from skilled teachers, for, in spite of training schools, we teach as we have been taught. The evolution of the teacher is a slow process. We shall not hasten it by narrowing the curriculum, or making it more prescriptive. The teaching force will increase in efficiency only as responsibility is imposed and accepted. The true kindergarten is the effective educational instrument that we find it today because of the thought put into the program daily by the teacher. The work is planned daily to meet the demand of the season and of the class. So it must be in the school, if satisfactory results are to be expected. The curriculum must afford ample material. The teacher must make appropriate selection.

The attempt to impose a uniform scholastic standard of promotion from grade to grade is responsible for much of the current feeling about the curriculum. Some children get less than other children from the same studies. Some people get less out of life than other people do, yet all are equally entitled to live the life and to make it as full as individual capacity permits. The standard for promotion must not be rigid. Each child must go thru the school, taking given subjects at the time when they are suited to his age and brain development, and therefore in harmony with his interests. He must not, if very old for the grade, be required to wait till he has attained a high degree of success in every part of the work just preceding. If we hold such a child back, we very greatly diminish his prospects for an education, and he probably drops out of school altogether. A teacher who insists upon the same attainments for all pupils in a class, irrespective of the home environment, causes an innocent and unoffending curriculum to seem much crowded, and he should have his attention called to the fact.

In our high schools the time has long since passed when pupils, without regard to their powers and purposes, are held to a single course of study. Two plans are quite common. One offers choice of courses; the other, choice of subjects. The one allows substitutions; the other establishes constants. The two plans, therefore, are very much alike. They differ in this particular: one tolerates selection of studies; the other makes selection of studies the rule. In neither case can the charge that the curriculum is overcrowded hold, where, as is often the case, graduation requirements are stated in units of work instead of in years spent in school; since, under such a plan, the student can regulate the number of studies that he will carry at any one time by his mental and physical power. There is no good reason why all pupils, without regard to ability or health, should spend just exactly four years in completing a highschool course. Some may need more time, some less. Each should find it worth while to put forth his best efforts, yet no one should be obliged to take more studies than he can pursue with success.

By way of summary, it may be said that the curriculum is what it is by reason of public demand. A curriculum is not necessarily crowded because it contains many subjects. The old narrow curriculum was overcrowded with things not worth remembering. Skillful teaching renders the old and the new mutually helpful, each serving the other. The curriculum is none too broad to meet varying needs; therefore, rightly interpreted and used, it is not overcrowded.

HOW EARLY MAY HANDWORK BE MADE A PART OF SCHOOL WORK?

CHARLES R. RICHARDS, DIRECTOR, MANUAL-TRAINING DEPARTMENT, TEACHERS COLLEGE, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, NEW YORK

If the title of this paper, suggested by our honorable President, were a little different, it would, in some ways, be easier to answer. If the question were, How early should handwork be made a part of school work? I should answer most emphatically: "At the beginning."

If there can be any question as to the place of handwork in the school, it seems to me that it must be as to its extension upward, but surely not as to how early it should begin. Every consideration of child nature points to this answer. How can we raise such a question when we look at the natural child and see what an enormously important influence handwork plays in his mental development; when we see how, in the very early years, his knowledge of the material world is largely built up by muscular contact; and when we see, a little later, how the chief expression of his crude, but vivid imagination finds vent in constant material and pictured creations?