ave a healthy interest in people, whether in life or in story, and in
the objects in nature around them. What is thus pre-eminently true of
the primary grades is true to a large extent throughout all the grades
of the common school. It seems almost curious that the more tender the
plants the more barren and inhospitable the soil upon which they are
expected to grow. Fortunately these little ones have such an
exuberance of life that it is not easily quenched. Formal knowledge
stands first in our common school course and real studies are allowed
to pick up such crumbs of comfort as may chance to fall. We believe in
formal studies and in their complete mastery in the common school, but
they should stand in the place of service to real studies. How
powerful the tendency has been and still is toward pure formal drill
and word memory is apparent from the fact that even geography and
history, which are not at all formal studies, but full to overflowing
with interesting facts and laws, have been reduced to a dry memorizing
of words, phrases, and stereotyped sentences.

It is not difficult to understand why the numerous body of teachers,
who easily drift into mechanical methods, has a preference for formal
studies. They are comparatively easy and humdrum and keep pupils busy.
Real studies, if taught with any sort of fitness, require energy,
interest, and versatility, besides much outside work in preparing
materials.

The second article of faith is a still stronger one. The better class
of energetic teachers would never have been won over to formal studies
on purely utilitarian grounds. A second conviction weighs heavily in
their minds. "_The discipline of the mental faculties_" is a talisman
of unusual potency with them. They prize arithmetic and grammar more
for this than for any direct practical value. The idea of mental
discipline, of training the faculties, is so ingrained into all our
educational thinking that it crops out in a hundred ways and holds our
courses of study in the beaten track of formal training with a
steadiness that is astonishing. These friends believe that we are
taking the back-bone out of education by making it interesting. The
culmination of this educational doctrine is reached when it is said
that the most valuable thing learned in school or out of it is to do
and do vigorously that which is most disagreeable. The training of the
will to meet difficulties unflinchingly is their aim, and