CORRELATION OF STUDIES IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS.
BY W. T. HARRIS, LL. D.
The undersigned Committee agrees upon the following report, each member reserving for himself the expression of his individual divergence from the opinion of the majority, by a statement appended to his signature, enumerating the points to which exception is taken and the grounds for them.
I. CORRELATION OF STUDIES.
Your Committee understands by correlation of studies:—
1. Logical order of topics and branches.
First, the arrangement of topics in proper sequence in the course of study, in such a manner that each branch develops in an order suited to the natural and easy progress of the child, and so that each step is taken at the proper time to help his advance to the next step in the same branch, or to the next steps in other related branches of the course of study.
2. Symmetrical whole of studies in the world of human learning.
Second, the adjustment of the branches of study in such a manner that the whole course at any given time represents all the great divisions of human learning, as far as is possible at the stage of maturity at which the pupil has arrived, and that each allied group of studies is represented by some one of its branches best adapted for the epoch in question; it being implied that there is an equivalence of studies to a greater or less degree within each group, and that each branch of human learning should be represented by some equivalent study; so that, while no great division is left unrepresented, no group shall have superfluous representatives, and thereby debar other groups from a proper representation.
3. Psychological symmetry—the whole mind.
Third, the selection and arrangement of the branches and topics within each branch, considered psychologically, with a view to afford the best exercise of the faculties of the mind, and to secure the unfolding of those faculties in their natural order, so that no one faculty is so overcultivated or so neglected as to produce abnormal or one-sided mental development.