n its two constituent
elements.

As a matter of fact neither history nor natural science occupies any
such prominence in the school course as we have judged fitting. Much
thoughtful study, experience in teaching, and pioneer labor in
partially new fields will be necessary in order to bring into existence
such a course of study based upon the best materials. Many teachers
already recognize the necessity for it and see before them a land of
plenty as compared with the half-desert barrenness revealed in our
present school course.

Two powerful convictions in the minds of those responsible for
education have contributed to produce this desert-like condition in
children's school employments, and this brings us to a discussion of
the overestimation in which purely _formal studies_ are held. The
first article of faith rests upon the unshaken belief in the _practical
studies_, reading, writing, and arithmetic. They are still looked upon
as a barrier that must be scaled before the real work of education can
begin. Learn to read, write, and figure and then the world of
knowledge as well as of business is at your command. But many children
find the barrier so difficult to scale that they really never get into
the fields of knowledge. Many of our most thorough-going educators
still firmly believe that a child can not learn anything worth
mentioning till he has first learned to read. But however deeply
rooted this confidence in the purely formal work of the early school
years may be, it must break down as soon as means are devised for
putting the realities of interesting knowledge before and underneath
all the forms of expression. Let the necessity for expression spring
from the real objects of study. Those children to whom the memorizing
and drill upon forms of expression becomes tedious deserve our
sympathy. There is a kind of knowledge adapted to arouse these dull
ones to their full capacity of interest. "Or what man is there of you
whom if his son ask bread will he give him a stone?" With many a child
the first reader, the arithmetic, or the grammar becomes a veritable
stone. There is no good reason why the sole burden of work in early
school grades should rest upon the learning of the pure formalities of
knowledge. Children's minds are not adapted to an exclusive diet of
this kind. The fact that children have good memories is no reason why
their minds should be gorged with the dryest memory materials. They
h