ing the art of appreciating and enjoying good literature.

Yet, trite and self-evident as this truism is, it is constantly violated
in teaching reading in the rural school. For the course in reading
usually consists of a series of five readers, expected to cover seven or
eight years of study. These readers contain less than one hundred pages
of reading matter to the year, or but little more than half a page a day
for the time the child should be in school. The result is that the same
reader is read over and over, to no purpose. With a rich literature
available for each of the eight years of the elementary school,
comparatively few of the rural schools have supplied either
supplementary readers or other reading books for the use of the
children.

The result is that most rural school children learn to read but
stumblingly, and seldom attain sufficient skill and taste in reading so
that it becomes a pleasure. Such a situation as this indicates the same
lack of wisdom that would be shown in employing willing and skillful
workmen to garner a rich harvest, and then sending them into the fields
with wholly insufficient and inadequate tools. The rural school must not
only teach the child the mechanics of reading, but lead him to read and
love good books. This can be done only _by supplying the books and
giving the child an opportunity to read them_.

Comparatively few people like to write. The pathway of expression finds
its way out more easily through the tongue than through the hand. Yet it
is highly necessary that every one should in this day be able to write.
Nor does this mean merely the ability to form letters into words and put
them down with a pen so that they are legible. This is a fundamental
requisite, but the mastery of penmanship, spelling, and punctuation is,
however, only a beginning. One must be able to formulate his thoughts
easily, to construct his sentences correctly, and to make his writing
effective; he must learn the art of composition.

Here again the principle already stated applies. The way to learn to
write is by writing; not just by the dreary treadmill of practicing
upon formal "compositions," but by having something to write that one
cares to express. The written language lessons should, therefore, always
grow out of the real interests and activities of the child in the home,
the school, or on the farm, and should include the art of
letter-writing, argumentation and exposition, as well as narrati