Fourth Year
Markham's The Man with the Hoe 2
Tale of Two Cities 10
Public Duty of the Educated Man 4
Macbeth 11
Self-Reliance 6

When a short play of a hundred pages like Macbeth requires nearly
three months for reading, when almost two months are given to Treasure
Island and nearly three months to Ivanhoe, clearly it is something
other than reading that is being attempted. It is perfectly obvious
that the high schools are attending principally to the mechanics of
expression and not to the content of the expression. The relative
emphasis should be reversed.

The amount of reading in the high schools should be greatly increased.
Those who object that rapid work is superficial believe that work must
be slow to be thorough. It should be remembered, however, that slow
work is often superficial and that rapid work is often excellent.
In fact the world's best workers are generally rapid, accurate, and
thorough. Ask any business man of wide experience. Now leaving aside
pupils who are slow by nature, it can be affirmed that pupils will
acquire slow, thorough habits or rapid, thorough habits according
to the way they are taught. If they are brought up by the slow
plan, naturally when speeded up suddenly, the quality of their work
declines. They can be rapid, accurate, and thorough only if such
strenuous work begins early and is continued consistently. Slow habits
are undesirable if better ones can just as well be implanted.

To avoid possible misunderstanding, it ought to be stated that the
plan recommended does not mean less drill upon the mechanical side
of reading. We are recommending a somewhat more modernized kind of
mechanics, and a much more strenuous kind of drill. The plan looks
both toward more reading and improved habits of reading.

One final suggestion finds here its logical place. Before the reading
work of elementary or high schools can be modernized, the city must
purchase the books used in the work. Leaving the supplying of books
to private purchase is the largest single obstacle in the way of
progress. Men in the business world will have no difficulty in seeing
the logic of this. When shoes, for example, were made by hand, each
workman could easily supply his own tools; but now that elaborate
machinery has been devised for their manufacture, it has become so
expensive that a machine factory must supply the tools. It