mple, adapted version of Robinson
Crusoe is used in some schools as a second reader. From time
immemorial choice selections of prose and verse have formed the staple
of our readers above the third. But generally these selections are
scrappy or fragmentary. Few of the great masterpieces have been used
because most of them are supposed to be too long. Broken fragments of
our choice literary products have been served up, but the best literary
works as wholes have never been given to the children in the schools.
The Greek youth were better served with the Iliad and Odyssey, and some
of our grandfathers with the tales of the Old Testament. We now go
still further back in the child-life and make use of fairy tales in the
first grade. But many are not yet able to realize that select fairy
stories are genuinely classical, that they are as well adapted to
stimulate the minds of children as Hamlet the minds of adults. (See
Special Method.)

The chief aim of our schools all along has not been an appreciation of
literary masterpieces either in their moral or art value, but to
acquire skill in reading, fluency, and naturalness, of expression. Our
schools have been almost completely absorbed in the purely _formal_ use
of our literary materials, learning to read in the earlier grades and
learning to read with rhetorical expression and confidence in the later
ones. In the present argument our chief concern is not with the formal
use of literary materials for practice in reading, but with the moral
culture, conviction, and habit of life they may foster. Nor have we
chiefly in view the _art_ side of our best literary pieces.
Appreciation of beauty in poetry and of strength in prose, admirable as
they may be, are quite secondary to the main purpose. Coming in direct
and vivid contact with manly deeds or with unselfish acts as
personified in choice biography, history, fiction, and real life, will
inspire children with thoughts that make life worth living. Neither
formal skill in reading nor appreciation of literary art can atone for
the lack of _direct moral incentive_ which historical studies should
give. All three ends should be reached.

Many teachers are now calling for a change in the spirit with which the
best biography and literature are used. They call for an improvement
in the quality and an increase in the quantity of complete historical
episodes and of literary masterpieces. An appreciative reading of
Ivanhoe re