CORRELATION OF STUDIES IN ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. BY W. T. HARRIS, LL. D. (continued 2)

Correlation by synthesis of studies.

Your Committee would mention another sense in which the expression correlation of studies is sometimes used. It is held by advocates of an artificial centre of the course of study. They use, for example, De Foe’s Robinson Crusoe for a reading exercise, and connect with it the lessons in geography and arithmetic. It has been pointed out by critics of this method that there is always danger of covering up the literary features of the reading matter under accessories of mathematics and natural science. If the material for other branches is to be sought for in connection with the literary exercise, it will distract the attention from the poetic unity. On the other hand, arithmetic and geography cannot be unfolded freely and comprehensively if they are to wait on the opportunities afforded in a poem or novel for their development. A correlation of this kind, instead of being a deeper correlation, such as is found in all parts of human learning by the studies of the college and university, is rather a shallow and uninteresting kind of correlation, that reminds one of the system of mnemonics, or artificial memory, which neglects the association of facts and events with their causes and the history of their evolution, and looks for unessential quips, puns, or accidental suggestions with a view to strengthening the memory. The effect of this is to weaken the power of systematic thinking which deals with essential relations, and substitute for it a chaotic memory that ties together things through false and seeming relations, not of the things and events, but of the words that denote them.

The correlation of geography and arithmetic and history in and through the unity of a work of fiction is at best an artificial correlation, which will stand in the way of the true objective correlation. It is a temporary scaffolding made for school purposes. Instruction should avoid such temporary structures as much as possible, and when used they should be only used for the day, and not for the year, because of the danger of building up an apperceptive centre in the child’s mind that will not harmonize with the true apperceptive centre required by the civilization. The story of Robinson Crusoe has intense interest to the child as a lesson in sociology, showing him the helplessness of isolated man and the re-enforcement that comes to him through society. It shows the importance of the division of labor. All children should read this book in the later years of the elementary course, and a few profitable discussions may be had in school regarding its significance. But De Foe painted in it only the side of adventure that he found in his countrymen in his epoch, England after the defeat of the Armada having taken up a career of conquest on the seas, ending by colonization and a world commerce. The liking for adventure continues to this day among all Anglo-Saxon peoples, and beyond other nationalities there is in English-speaking populations a delight in building up civilization from the very foundation. This is only, however, one phase of the Anglo-Saxon mind. Consequently the history of Crusoe is not a proper centre for a year’s study in school. It omits cities, governments, the world commerce, the international process, the Church, the newspaper and book from view, and they are not even reflected in it.

Your Committee would call attention in this connection to the importance of the pedagogical principle of analysis and isolation as preceding synthesis and correlation. There should be rigid isolation of the elements of each branch for the purpose of getting a clear conception of what is individual and peculiar in a special province of learning. Otherwise one will not gain from each its special contribution to the whole. That there is some danger from the kind of correlation that essays to teach all branches in each will be apparent from this point of view.

III. THE SCHOOL PROGRAMME.

In order to find a place in the elementary school for the several branches recommended in this report, it will be necessary to use economically the time allotted for the school term, which is about two hundred days, exclusive of vacations and holidays. Five days per week and five hours of actual school work or a little less per day, after excluding recesses for recreation, give about twenty-five hours per week. There should be, as far as possible, alternation of study-hours and recitations (the word recitation being used in the United States for class exercise or lesson conducted by the teacher and requiring the critical attention of the entire class). Those studies requiring the clearest thought should be taken up, as a usual thing, in the morning session, say arithmetic the second half hour of the morning and grammar the half-hour next succeeding the morning recess for recreation in the open air. By some who are anxious to prevent study at home, or at least to control its amount it is thought advisable to place the arithmetic lesson after the grammar lesson, so that the study learned at home will be grammar instead of arithmetic. It is found by experience that if mathematical problems are taken home for solution two bad habits arise; namely, in one case, the pupil gets assistance from his parents or others, and thereby loses to some extent his own power of overcoming difficulties by brave and persistent attacks unaided by others; the other evil is a habit of consuming long hours in the preparation of a lesson that should be prepared in thirty minutes, if all the powers of mind are fresh and at command. An average child may spend three hours in the preparation of an arithmetic lesson. Indeed, in repeated efforts to solve one of the so-called “conundrums,” a whole family may spend the entire evening. One of the unpleasant results of the next day is that the teacher who conducts the lesson never knows the exact capacity and rate of progress of his pupils; in the recitation he probes the knowledge and preparation of the pupil, plus an unknown amount of preparatory work borrowed from parents and others. He even increases the length of the lessons, and requires more work at home, when the amount already exceeds the unaided capacity of the pupil.

The lessons should be arranged so as to bring in such exercises as furnish relief from intellectual tension between others that make large demands on the thinking powers. Such exercises as singing and calisthenics, writing and drawing, also reading, are of the nature of a relief from those recitations that tax the memory, critical alertness, and introspection, like arithmetic, grammar, and history.

Your Committee has not been able to agree on the question whether pupils who leave school early should have a course of study different from the course of those who are to continue on into secondary and higher work. It is contended, on the one hand, that those who leave early should have a more practical course, and that they should dispense with those studies that seem to be in the nature of preparatory work for secondary and higher education. Such studies as algebra and Latin, for example, should not be taken up unless the pupil expects to pursue the same for a sufficient time to complete the secondary course. It is replied, on the other hand, that it is best to have one course for all, because any school education is at best but an initiation for the pupil into the art of learning, and that wherever he leaves off in his school course he should continue, by the aid of the public library and home study, in the work of mastering science and literature. It is further contended that a brief course in higher studies, like Latin and algebra, instead of being useless, is of more value than any elementary studies that might replace them. The first ten lessons in algebra give the pupil the fundamental idea of the general expression of arithmetical solutions by means of letters and other symbols. Six months’ study of it gives him the power to use the method in stating the manifold conditions of a problem in partnership, or in ascertaining a value that depends on several transformations of the data given. It is claimed, indeed, that the first few lessons in any branch are relatively of more educational value than an equal number of subsequent lessons, because the fundamental ideas and principles of the new study are placed at the beginning. In Latin, for instance, the pupil learns in his first week’s study the, to him, strange phenomenon of a language that performs by inflections what his own language performs by the use of prepositions and auxiliaries. He is still more surprised to find that the order of words in a sentence is altogether different in Roman usage from that to which he is accustomed. He further begins to recognize in the Latin words many roots or stems which are employed to denote immediate sensuous objects, while they have been adopted into his English tongue to signify fine shades of distinction in thought or feeling. By these three things his powers of observation in matters of language are armed, as it were, with new faculties. Nothing that he has hitherto learned in grammar is so radical and far-reaching as what he learns in his first week’s study of Latin. The Latin arrangement of words in a sentence indicates a different order of mental arrangement in the process of apprehension and expression of thought. This arrangement is rendered possible by declensions. This amounts to attaching prepositions to the ends of the words, which they thus convert into adjectival or adverbial modifiers; whereas the separate prepositions of the English must indicate by their position in the sentence their grammatical relation. These observations, and the new insight into the etymology of English words having a Latin derivation, are of the nature of mental seeds which will grow and bear fruit throughout life in the better command of one’s native tongue. All this will come from a very brief time devoted to Latin in school.

Amount of time for each branch.

Your Committee recommends that an hour of sixty minutes each week be assigned in the programme for each of the following subjects throughout the eight years: physical culture, vocal music, oral lessons in natural science (hygiene to be included among the topics under this head), oral lessons in biography and general history, and that the same amount of time each week shall be devoted to drawing from the second year to the eighth inclusive; to manual training during the seventh and eighth years so as to include sewing and cookery for the girls, and work in wood and iron for the boys.

Your Committee recommends that reading be given at least one lesson each day for the entire eight years, it being understood, however, that there shall be two or more lessons each day in reading in the first and second years, in which the recitation is necessarily very short, because of the inability of the pupil to give continued close attention, and because he has little power of applying himself to the work of preparing lessons by himself. In the first three years the reading should be limited to pieces in the colloquial style, but selections from the classics of the language in prose and in poetry shall be read to the pupil from time to time, and discussions made of such features of the selections read as may interest the pupils. After the third year your Committee believes that the reading lesson should be given to selections from classic authors of English, and that the work of the recitation should be divided between (a) the elocution, (b) the grammatical peculiarities of the language, including spelling, definitions, syntactical construction, punctuation, and figures of prosody, and (c) the literary contents, including the main and accessory ideas, the emotions painted, the deeds described, the devices of style to produce a strong impression on the reader. Your Committee wishes to lay emphasis on the importance of the last item,—that of literary study,—which should consume more and more of the time of the recitation from grade to grade in the period from the fourth to the eighth year. In the fourth year and previously the first item—that of elocution, to secure distinct enunciation and correct pronunciation—should be most prominent. In the fifth and sixth years the second item—that of spelling, defining, and punctuation—should predominate slightly over the other two items. In the years from the fifth to the eighth there should be some reading of entire stories, such as Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, Rip Van Winkle, The Lady of the Lake, Hiawatha, and similar stories adapted in style and subject-matter to the capacity of the pupils. An hour should be devoted each week to conversations on the salient points of the story, its literary and ethical bearings.

Your Committee agrees in the opinion that in teaching language care should be taken that the pupil practices much in writing exercises and original compositions. At first the pupil will use only his colloquial vocabulary, but as he gains command of the technical vocabularies of geography, arithmetic, and history, and learns the higher literary vocabulary of his language, he will extend his use of words accordingly. Daily from the first year the child will prepare some lesson or portion of a lesson in writing. Your Committee has included under the head of oral grammar (from the first to the middle of the fifth year) one phase of this written work devoted to the study of the literary form and the technicalities of composition in such exercises as letter writing, written reviews of the several branches studied, reports of the oral lessons in natural science and history, paraphrases of the poems and prose literature of the readers, and finally compositions or written essays on suitable themes assigned by the teacher, but selected from the fields of knowledge studied in school. Care should be taken to criticise all paraphrases of poetry in respect to the good or bad taste shown in the choice of words; parodies should never be permitted.

It is thought by your Committee that the old style of composition writing was too formal. It was kept too far away from the other work of the pupil. Instead of giving a written account of what he had learned in arithmetic, geography, grammar, history, and natural science, the pupil attempted artificial descriptions and reflections on such subjects as “Spring,” “Happiness,” “Perseverance,” “Friendship,” or something else outside of the line of his school studies.

Your Committee has already expressed its opinion that a good English style is not to be acquired by the study of grammar so much as by familiarity with great masterpieces of literature. We especially recommend that pupils who have taken up the fourth and fifth readers, containing the selections from great authors, should often be required to make written paraphrases of prose or poetic models of style, using their own vocabulary to express the thoughts so far as possible, and borrowing the recherché words and phrases of the author, where their own resources fail them. In this way the pupil learns to see what the great author has done to enrich the language and to furnish adequate means of expression for what could not be presented in words before, or at least not in so happy a manner.

Your Committee believes that every recitation is, in one aspect of it, an attempt to express the thoughts and information of the lesson in the pupil’s own words, and thus an initial exercise in composition. The regular weekly written review of the important topics in the several branches studied is a more elaborate exercise in composition, the pupil endeavoring to collect what he knows and to state it systematically and in proper language. The punctuation, spelling, syntax, penmanship, choice of words, and style should not, it is true, be made a matter of criticism in connection with the other lessons, but only in the language lesson proper. But the pupil will learn language, all the same, by the written and oral recitations. The oral grammar lessons, from the first year to the middle of the fifth year, should deal chiefly with the use of language, gradually introducing the grammatical technique as it is needed to describe accurately the correct forms and the usages violated.

Your Committee believes that there is some danger of wasting the time of the pupil in these oral and written language lessons in the first four years by confining the work of the pupil to the expression of ordinary commonplace ideas not related to the subjects of his other lessons, especially when the expression is confined to the colloquial vocabulary. Such training has been severely and justly condemned as teaching what is called prating or gabbling, rather than a noble use of English speech. It is clear that the pupil should have a dignified and worthy subject of composition, and what is so good for his purpose as the themes he has tried to master in his regular lessons? The reading lessons will give matter for literary style, the geography for scientific style, and the arithmetic for a business style; for all styles should be learned.

Your Committee recommends that selected lists of words difficult to spell be made from the reading lessons and mastered by frequent writing and oral spelling during the fourth, fifth, and sixth years.

Your Committee recommends that the use of a text-book in grammar begin with the second half of the fifth year, and continue until the beginning of the study of Latin in the eighth grade, and that one daily lesson of twenty-five or thirty minutes be devoted to it.

For Latin we recommend one daily lesson of thirty minutes for the eighth year. For arithmetic we recommend number work from the first year to the eighth, one lesson each day, but the use of the text-book in number should not, in our opinion, begin until the first quarter of the third year. We recommend that the applications of elementary algebra to arithmetic, as hereinbefore explained, be substituted for pure arithmetic in the seventh and eighth years, a daily lesson being given.

Your Committee recommends that penmanship as a separate branch be taught in the first six years at least three lessons per week.

Geography, in the opinion of your Committee, should begin with oral lessons in the second year, and with a text-book in the third quarter of the third year, and be continued to the close of the sixth year with one lesson each day, and in the seventh and eighth years with three lessons per week.

History of the United States with the use of a text-book, your Committee recommends for the seventh and the first half of the eighth year, one lesson each day; the Constitution of the United States for the third quarter of the eighth year.

The following schedule will show the number of lessons per week for each quarter of each year:—

Reading. Eight years, with daily lessons.

Penmanship. Six years, ten lessons per week for first two years, five for third and fourth, and three for fifth and sixth.

Spelling Lists. Fourth, fifth, and sixth years, four lessons per week.

Grammar. Oral, with composition or dictation, first year to middle of fifth year, text-book from middle of fifth year to close of seventh year, five lessons per week. (Composition writing should be included under this head. But the written examinations on the several branches should be counted under the head of composition work.)

Latin or French or German. Eighth year, five lessons per week.

Arithmetic. Oral first and second year, text-book third to sixth year, five lessons per week.

Algebra. Seventh and eighth years, five lessons per week.

Geography. Oral lessons second year to middle of third year, text-book from middle of third year, five lessons weekly to seventh year, and three lessons to close of eighth.

Natural Science and Hygiene. Sixty minutes per week, eight years.

History of United States. Five hours per week seventh year and first half of eighth year.

Constitution of United States. Third quarter in the eighth year.

General History and Biography. Oral lessons, sixty minutes a week, eight years.

Physical Culture. Sixty minutes a week, eight years.

Vocal Music. Sixty minutes a week, eight years.

Drawing. Sixty minutes a week, eight years.

Manual Training, Sewing, and Cooking. One-half day each week in seventh and eighth years.

Your Committee recommends recitations of fifteen minutes in length in the first and second years, of twenty minutes in length in the third and fourth years, of twenty-five minutes in the fifth and sixth years, and of thirty minutes in the seventh and eighth.

The results of this programme show for the first and second years twenty lessons a week of fifteen minutes each, besides seven other exercises occupying an average of twelve minutes apiece each day; the total amount of time occupied in the continuous attention of the recitation or class exercises being twelve hours, or an average of two hours and twenty-four minutes per day.

For the third year twenty lessons a week of twenty minutes each, and five general exercises taking up five hours a week, or an average of one hour per day, giving an average time per day of two hours and twenty minutes for class recitations or exercises.

In the fourth the recitations increase to twenty-four (by reason of four extra lessons in spelling) and the time occupied in recitations and exercises to thirteen hours and an average per day of two hours thirty-six minutes.

Branches. 1st year 2d year 3d year 4th year 5th year 6th year 7th year 8th year

Reading 10 lessons a week 5 lessons a week

Writing 10 lessons a week 5 lessons a week 3 lessons a week

Spelling lists 4 lessons a week

English Grammar Oral, with composition lessons 5 lessons a week

Latin 5 lessons

Arithmetic Oral, 60 minutes 5 lessons a week with text-book

Algebra 5 lessons a week

Geography Oral, 60 minutes a week 15 lessons a week with text-book 3 lessons a week

Natural Science +Hygiene Sixty minutes a week

U. S. History 5 lessons a week

U. S. Constitution 15 ls

General History Oral, sixty minutes a week

Physical Culture Sixty minutes a week

Vocal Music Sixty minutes a week divided into 4 lessons

Drawing Sixty minutes a week

Man’l Train. or Sewing+ Cookery One-half day each week

Number of Lessons 20 + 7 daily exer. 20 + 7 daily exer. 20 + 5 daily exer. 24 + 5 daily exer. 27 + 5 daily exer. 27 + 5 daily exer. 23 + 6 daily exer. 23 + 6 daily exer.

Total Hours of Recitat’ns 12 12 11⅔ 13 16¼ 16¼ 17½ 17½

Length of Recitations 15 min 15 min 20 min 20 min 25 min 25 min 30 min 30 min

In the fifth and sixth years the number of recitations increases to twenty-seven per week, owing to the addition of formal grammar, and the total number of hours required for all is 16¼ per week, or an average of 3¼ per day.

In the seventh and eighth years the number of lessons decreases to twenty-three, history being added, penmanship and special lessons in spelling discontinued, the time devoted to geography reduced to three lessons a week. But the recitation is increased to thirty minutes in length. Manual training occupies a half-day, or 2½ hours, each week. The total is 19 hours per week, or 3¾ per day.

The foregoing tabular exhibit shows all of these particulars.

IV. METHODS AND ORGANIZATION.

Your Committee is agreed that the time devoted to the elementary school work should not be reduced from eight years, but they have recommended, as hereinbefore stated, that in the seventh and eighth years a modified form of algebra be introduced in place of advanced arithmetic, and that in the eighth year English grammar yield place to Latin. This makes, in their opinion, a proper transition to the studies of the secondary school and is calculated to assist the pupil materially in his preparation for that work. Hitherto, the change from the work of the elementary school has been too abrupt, the pupil beginning three formal studies at once, namely, algebra, physical geography, and Latin.

Your Committee has found it necessary to discuss the question of methods of teaching in numerous instances, while considering the question of educational values and programmes, because the value and time of beginning of the several branches depend so largely on the method of teaching.

The following recommendations, however, remain for this part of their report:—

They would recommend that the specialization of teachers’ work should not be attempted before the seventh or eighth year of the elementary school and in not more than one or two studies then. In the secondary school it is expected that a teacher will teach one, or at most, two branches. In the elementary school, for at least six years, it is better, on the whole, to have each teacher instruct his pupils in all the branches that they study, for the reason that only in this way can he hold an even pressure on the requirements of work, correlating it in such a manner that no one study absorbs undue attention. In this way the pupils prepare all their lessons under the direct supervision of the same teacher and by their recitations show what defects of methods of study there have been in the preparation.

The ethical training is much more successful under this plan, because the personal influence of a teacher is much greater when he or she knows minutely the entire scope of the school work. In the case of the special teacher the responsibility is divided and the opportunities of special acquaintance with character and habits diminished.

With one teacher, who supervises the study and hears all the recitations, that there is a much better opportunity to cultivate the two kinds of attention. The teacher divides his pupils into two classes and hears one recite while the other class prepares for the next lesson. The pupils reciting are required to pay strict attention to the one of their number who is explaining the point assigned him by the teacher—they are to be on the alert to notice any mistakes of statement or omissions of important data, they are at the same time to pay close attention to the remarks of the teacher. This is one kind of attention, which may be called associated critical attention. The pupils engaged in the preparation of the next lesson are busy, each one by himself, studying the book and mastering its facts and ideas, and comparing them one with another, and making the effort to become oblivious of their fellow-pupils, the recitation going on, and the teacher. This is another kind of attention, which is not associated, but an individual effort to master for one’s self without aid a prescribed task and to resist all distracting influences. These two disciplines in attention are the best formal training that the school affords.

Your Committee has already mentioned a species of faulty correlation wherein the attempt is made to study all branches in each, misapplying Jacotot’s maxim, “all is in all” (tout est dans tout).

A frequent error of this kind is the practice of making every recitation a language lesson, and interrupting the arithmetic, geography, history, literature, or whatever it may be, by calling the pupil’s attention abruptly to something in his forms of expression, his pronunciation, or to some faulty use of English; thus turning the entire system of school work into a series of grammar exercises and weakening the power of continuous thought on the objective contents of the several branches, by creating a pernicious habit of self-consciousness in the matter of verbal expression. While your Committee would not venture to say that there should not be some degree of attention to the verbal expression in all lessons, it is of the opinion that it should be limited to criticism of the recitation for its want of technical accuracy. The technical words in each branch should be discussed until the pupil is familiar with their full force. The faulty English should be criticised as showing confusion of thought or memory, and should be corrected in this sense. But solecisms of speech should be silently noted by the teacher for discussion in the regular language lesson.

The question of promotion of pupils has occupied from time to time very much attention. Your Committee believes that in many systems of elementary schools there is injury done by too much formality in ascertaining whether the pupils of a given class have completed the work up to a given arbitrarily fixed point, and are ready to take up the next apportionment of the work. In the early days of city school systems, when the office of superintendent was first created, it was thought necessary to divide up the graded course of study into years of work, and to hold stated annual examinations to ascertain how many pupils could be promoted to the next grade or year’s work. All that failed at this examination were set back at the beginning of the year’s work to spend another year in reviewing it. This was to meet the convenience of the superintendent, who, it was said, could not hold examinations to suit the wants of individuals or particular classes. From this arrangement there naturally resulted a great deal of what is called “marking time.” Pupils who had nearly completed the work of the year were placed with pupils who had been till now a year’s interval below them. Discouragement and demoralization at the thought of taking up again a course of lessons learned once before caused many pupils to leave school prematurely.

This evil has been remedied in nearly one-half of the cities by promoting pupils whenever they have completed the work of a grade. The constant tendency of classification to become imperfect by reason of the difference in rates of advancement of the several pupils owing to disparity in ages, degree of maturity, temperament, and health, makes frequenter classification necessary. This is easily accomplished by promoting the few pupils who distance the majority of their classmates into the next class above, separated as it is, or ought to be, by an interval of less than half a year. The bright pupils thus promoted have to struggle to make up the ground covered in the interval between the two classes, but they are nearly always able to accomplish this, and generally will in two years’ time need another promotion from class to class.

The procrustean character of the old city systems has been removed by this device.

There remain for mention some other evils besides bad systems of promotion due to defects of organization. The school buildings are often with superstitious care kept apart exclusively for particular grades of pupils. The central building erected for high school purposes, though only half filled, is not made to relieve the neighboring grammar school, crowded to such a degree that it cannot receive the classes which ought to be promoted from the primary schools. It has happened in such cases that this superstition prevailed so far that the pupils in the primary school building were kept at work on studies already finished, because they could not be transferred to the grammar school.

In all good school systems the pupils take up new work when they have completed the old, and the bright pupils are transferred to higher classes when they have so far distanced their fellows that the amount of work fixed for the average ability of the class does not give them enough to do.

In conclusion, your Committee would state, by way of explanation, that it has been led into many digressions, in illustrating the details of its recommendations in this report, through its desire to make clear the grounds on which it has based its conclusions and through the hope that such details will call out a still more thorough-going discussion of the educational values of branches proposed for elementary schools, and of the methods by which those branches may be successfully taught.

With a view to increase the interest in this subject, your Committee recommends the publication of selected passages from the papers sent in by invited auxiliary committees and by volunteers, many of these containing valuable suggestions not mentioned in this report.