Can you write?
Can you read and write?
I can read.
I can write.
I can read and write.
This lesson contained but six words. It appealed to the ego, referring as it did to the student himself, and related to the activity in which he was, at the moment, engaged.
As the lessons progressed, farm improvement, good roads, civics, health, home economics, horticulture, sanitation and thrift were woven into them, and each lesson accomplished a double purpose, the primary one of teaching the pupil to read, and at the same time that of imparting instruction in the things that vitally affected him in his daily life. It was a correlation of subjects which, in adult education is even more necessary than in that of the child.
The lessons on the road, placed side by side, compared the advantage of the good and the disadvantage of the bad roads. The first was:
This is a road.
It is a good road.