It does not, as it seems to me, follow that because correlation based on Robinson Crusoe is a failure, all correlations having the same general purpose will necessarily prove failures. For my own part, I do not believe that correlation needs any “centre,” outside the child and its natural activities. If, however, it seems wiser to give special prominence to any given field of acquisition, it should, in my judgment, be accorded to language and its closely related subjects—reading, spelling, writing, composing, study of literature, etc., etc. Indeed, language as a mode of expression is organically related to thinking, in all fields of knowledge, as form is related to content. A “system” or “programme” of correlation on this basis would seek for fundamental ideas in all the leading branches and make them themes of thought and occasions of language exercises. The selections would omit all trivialities in all subjects, and would not attempt to correlate for the mere sake of correlation; but would seek to correlate wherever by such correlation kindred themes may be made to illuminate one another. To illustrate, concrete problems in arithmetic would be sought that would clearly develop and illustrate mathematical ideas and their application; but in a secondary way these problems would be sought for in the various departments of concrete knowledge—geography, history, physics, chemistry, astronomy, meteorology, political, industrial, or domestic economy. But none of these themes would be so relied upon for problems as to compel one to choose unreasonable or trivial relations on which to base them. The problems themselves should represent true and important facts and relations of the other subjects as surely and rigidly as they should involve correct mathematical principles; and all such exercises should be rightly related to the child’s education in language.
In like manner, when a child is engaged in nature study of any kind, some valuable problems in mathematics may be found rightly related both to the subject directly in hand and the child’s natural progress in arithmetic. Also many of the lessons in nature study are directly related to some of the finest literature ever produced, in which analogies of nature are made the means of expression for the finest and most delicate of the human experiences. When the child has mastered the physical facts on which the literary inspiration is based is the true time to give him the advantage of the study of such literature. These ideas are not only rightly related to one another, but to the mind itself. It is, so to speak, the nascent moment when the mind can easily and fully master what might else remain an impenetrable mystery; and all because subjects and occasion have come into happy conjunction.
This is not the place in which to attempt any elaboration of such a system of correlation. But I feel that its absence from the report may make many persons feel that the latter is so far incomplete.
BY WILLIAM H. MAXWELL, OF BROOKLYN.
With the main lines of thought in this report I find myself in agreement. With many of its details, however, I am not in accord. I regret to have to express my dissent from its conclusions in the following particulars:—
1. The report makes too little of the uses of grammar as supplying canons of criticism which enable the pupil to correct his own English, and as furnishing a key (grammatical analysis) that gives him the power to see the meaning of obscure or involved sentences.
2. For the study of literature, complete works are to be preferred to the selections found in school readers.
3. That species of language exercise known as paraphrasing I regard as harmful.
4. The study of number should not be omitted from the first year in school. Practice in the primary operations of arithmetic should not be omitted from the seventh and eighth years. The quadratic equation should be reserved for the high school.
5. The foreign language introduced into the elementary school course should be a modern language—French or German. Latin should be reserved for those who have time and opportunity to master its literature.