This certainly invites a willing use of the editorial blue pencil. What shall we cut out under the first head, as being too abstract? I should say all mathematics, all systematic history and civil government, all grammar (this would exclude the classics), and all mechanical drawing. Under the second class, studies involved elsewhere or better learned by implication, I would cut out formal spelling, formal writing, and formal political geography. I seriously propose, then, and I ask your very serious consideration of the proposition, to cut out mathematics, history, civil government, grammar, classics, mechanical drawing, spelling, writing, and political geography—almost the whole equipment of an elementary school. We have left of the old curriculum only the speaking, reading, and writing of English, and of French or German; the study of science (preferably not physiology), and free-hand drawing. This fragment, poor as it may seem to you at first, could yet be made the material of a rich culture. When you add to this the cultivation of the body, and the faculties of touch, sight, hearing, smell, taste, speech and movement, and the acquisition of those accomplishments which from their organic nature must be learned, if at all, in childhood, such as instrumental music and singing, you will find that the days will be more than full—full not of weariness, but of delight. The studies which I have so mercilessly cut out from the curriculum may safely be left to the high school, and some of them left out altogether. Should Jack or Margaret fail to reach the high school, I am still very strongly of the opinion that the acquisition of those accomplishments and powers that I have here suggested would enrich their lives with a graciousness and success that could never have been extracted from the old studies.
Let us look at this new curriculum. To speak English correctly in a clear, pleasant voice, to read it intelligently and agreeably, to write it plainly and without ambiguity—this in itself would be a liberal culture, which few of us attain to. But the end is not yet. Think of what is involved in our reading. We can read stories of our country, of the men and women who have made it great; we can read descriptions of colonies and explorations, and later states, we can read its best and most stirring literature; and we can do all this in the presence of pictures of the men and women and places, and of maps of the lands, and can get a deeper and more human knowledge of America than could be gained by any amount of unemotional history and civil government and geography. In the same vivid way we can study the history, geography, and civilization of other times and places, not as something to be mechanically learned, but as something to be experienced, something to lay hold upon our sentiment and affect our life.
