THE FOUR STORY GROUPS.
Thus the stories fall into four groups. The First Group comprises The Seven Little Goats, The Star Dollars, Red Riding Hood, Sweet Rice Porridge, Mother Frost, and Rose-Red and Snow-White. These stories are confined chiefly to the home circle and deal with the relation of parent and child.
The Second Group is The Cock and the Hen, The Death of the Cock, and Birdie and Lena. These are partly inside and partly outside the family circle. There is contact with persons outside the home.
The Third Group is The Wolf and the Fox, The Street Musicians, The Straw, The Coal and the Bean, The Wonderful Traveler, and Cinderella. This group extends the relationship further into the external world.
Lastly, in the story of Hans and the Four Big Giants, the horizon is widened so as to include the separation from the home and an independent career among strangers. The Fir Tree is added for use as a Christmas story for those who desire it. In fact, many of the stories could be taken out of their order and be used as introductions to the study of the seasons. The Cock and the Hen is an autumn story, while several others might be used as dealing with spring time.
III.
THE PROBLEM OF CORRELATION.
The two chief problems of educational practice concern the selection and the arrangement or organization of the educative material. The problem of the organization of the subject-matter is spoken of as Correlation or Concentration. Any proposal silent on this point would not be adequate to the best school thought or practice of the hour.
The main contention over this question hinges on what subject should be taken as a center around which other lines of instruction should be gathered. Against the proposition to use the historical or culture-historical material as such a center objections can easily be raised. It will be granted that it does not offer an ideal point of departure for all the activities of even the primary school. It will be granted further that such a center is not the true center of the social life. It is liable to over-emphasize the purely intellectual side of instruction at the expense of the volitional phases, and it cannot be a center for the correlation of number.
But mathematics and literature do not correlate. Arithmetic and formal science have arisen in dealing with the practical problems of industrial processes. They are forms which industrial processes have taken on. There are some reasonable objections to the correlation of what is called “Construction Work” with this literature material.