Four Elementary Subjects.
Children, therefore, are to be trained up in the Elementary School, for helping forward the abilities of the mind, in these four things, as recommended to us both by reason and custom: Reading, to enable us to receive what has been bequeathed to us by others, and to store our memories with what is best for us; Writing, to enable us to do for others what was done for us, by handing on the fruits of our own experience, and besides to serve our own purposes; Drawing, to be a guide to the senses, and to afford us pleasure in the objects of sight; and Music, both with the voice and with an instrument, for the reasons above stated.
By reading we receive what antiquity has left us; by writing we hand on what posterity craves of us; by both we get great advantage in all the circumstances of our daily life. By delineating with the pencil, what object is there open to the eye, either brought forth by nature, or set forth by art, the knowledge and use of which we cannot attain to? By the study of music, besides the acquirement of a noble science, so definitely formed by arithmetical precept, so necessary a step to further knowledge, such a glass in which to behold both the beauty of concord and the blots of dissension, even in a body politic, how much help and pleasure our natural weakness receives for consolation, for hope, for courage! I do not touch here on the skilful handling of the untrained voice, nor the fine exercising of the unskilled fingers, though these things are not to be neglected where they can be obtained, and are naturally required when imperfection is to be removed by them. Again, does not all our learning, apprehended by the eye and uttered by the tongue, confess the great benefit it receives by reading? Does not all our expression, brought forth by the mind and set down by the pen, acknowledge obligation to the study of writing? Do not all our descriptions, which picture to the sense what is fashioned in thought, both preach and praise the pencil which makes them visible? Does not all our delight in times of leisure,—and we labour only for the sake of gaining rest and freedom from care,—protest in plain terms that it is wonderfully indebted to the music of both voice and instrument? This is the natural sweetener of our bitter life, in the judgment of every man who is not too much soured. Now, what quality of learning is there, deserving of any praise, that does not fall within this elementary course, or is not furthered by it, whether it be connected with the higher professions, or occupations of lower rank, or the necessary trades of common life?