Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 48.djvu/757

Rh be said also, without repeating arguments here, of the psycho-manual or industrial subjects: they, too, must be concerned with the expression, and hence with the deepening and intensifying of thought gained from the pursuit of history, literature, and science. Thus when the pupil studies about the industries in his environment and gains an impression of the activities of the mechanic, farmer, seamstress, and so on, he makes his ideas effective and lasting by imitating these activities himself. But to require him to learn the rules and mechanism of these industries before having an opportunity to perform them is to create an indifference or distaste for them all because of the formality and emptiness of such work. In drawing, too, the object should be to have the pupil express what has been gained from the study of some real object, or to illustrate some scene from history or literature; and when the mere grammar of drawing is learned before putting it to any use, not only interest but effectiveness in the work is lost.

Other matters should be considered in a complete and thorough analysis of educational values in elementary education; but from what it has been possible to say here it may be concluded that in the arrangement of the elementary school curriculum the central place should be given to the real or content studies—literature, history, geography, and science—and all other subjects must follow and depend upon them in the acquisition and expression of thought gained from their pursuit. As to whether the literary or the scientific subjects should receive greater emphasis there seems not to be so great agreement among psychologists and educators; although the ideal of the development of moral character in our schools, so frequently spoken of nowadays by teachers, would seem to argue the superiority of those studies that have a moral content—that is, those that deal with moral matters. Educational psychology points out a danger people are liable to fall into in thinking that because the material of instruction used treats of moral questions the result upon the character of the pupil must of necessity be moral. If this were true it would follow that the learning of moral subject-matter, as literature and history, would constitute adequate means for the training of exemplary men and women. In somewhat the same way it was once thought by religious teachers, and may be yet in some places, that the study of the catechism would cause an individual to become religious. But a little observation of types in one's environment will show that these theories do not hold absolutely, at any rate. If it necessarily follows that the study of history produces an estimable moral character, then we should find historians to be exemplary above all other men, and statesmen to be infinitely more than politicians. Taking things literally, we