Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/39

Rh who expects to earn his bread and butter by teaching the classics, may be gained after the student has entered college in half the time commonly devoted to its acquisition in the schools.

The ideal school course would allow a share of time to mathematics continuously, and this subject may be passed over with a few words, not because it is unimportant, but because, unlike Greek and Latin, it "needs no bush." It may be mentioned that practice in deductive reasoning, for which mathematics is chiefly recommended, is obtained especially from "mental" arithmetic and geometry, while "written" arithmetic and algebra are less important for this purpose. Some time must be devoted to learning those facts of physical and political geography which the educated man is expected to know. Every English-speaking boy should become familiar with the history of the English race, and, if there is time for anything more, this suggestion in the pamphlet from which I have been quoting deserves attention: "To make amends for abandoning the study of Latin and Greek authors, an affectionate look into the life of antiquity should be taken. Besides reviewing historically the literature and civilization of the ancients, good translations of the classics should be diligently and spiritedly read and explained, in order that the vanished interest may be recalled, and that the now qualified pupil may be spurred on to take the optional instruction in the Latin and Greek languages in the upper classes, and tread the path to the original sources."

Those who can spare time for these studies are to be congratulated, as are those who have the opportunity to study the history of the tine arts, or Egyptology. But as "flowers out of place" are called weeds, so the study of antiquity becomes noxious when it crowds more beneficial studies. An additional instance of such crowding is contained in the following:

"It is passing strange that, during the long period of their education, the rising generation should never hear an earthly syllable about the constitution and administration of their nation, about their own civil rights and duties, about matters of finance, etc. Of course, there is no time for this in a school in which the pupils learn exactly how the 'revenue-administration of the Athenians' was constituted, what salary a Roman judge received, and what share of his father's property the noble-born Attic youth was entitled to."

Much the same view was taken by Paul Pfizer: "The wisest peoples held the subject of education to be worthy of the most careful attention and the deepest reflection; but, since education has no longer any reference to the state and to public life, since the duty of the educator has been made merely to be at home in a world which perished long ago, and to take no cognizance of his native land, it has covered itself with the dust of the school, and assumed the color of the ridiculous and the pedantic."

Would not a boy who had completed the course just outlined be