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it would not be worthy of our attention; but when we find out what continent he discovered and the vast chain of results that followed that discovery, it becomes one of the most important facts in the world's history.

As a rule, the pupil feels that the purpose of his work in school is the accumulation of information and he pays but little attention to the arrangement of that information in a logical whole. He is such a slave to the textbook that he has lost sight of the subject. His aim is to memorize the thought, if not the words, of the textbook; hence all facts in the book stand out as on a level plain and are regarded as of equal importance. When he has completed a book, he has a good many facts, but these facts, not being arranged in their logical order, leave him in confusion. Few pupils are able to give an outline of a textbook on history or science they have studied, and much less are they able to give an outline of the subject. They do not realize the relation of the textbook to the subject-that it may be a very large or a very small part of the subject.

From the very first lesson, the pupil should be taught that he is going to study, not a textbook, but a subject, and that that subject has a certain logical arrangement which it is necessary for him to know. If the subject is arranged in its logical order, the mind can, at once, grasp it in all its important details. For this reason every subject should begin and end with a general survey. It should begin with a general survey to give the pupil a conception of what he is going to study; it should end in the same way to give him an opportunity to assemble the facts he has learned and arrange them in one complete whole. In the process of his study he has been thinking of details, topics, sub-topics, etc., and he must be given an opportunity to see the relation of these to the subject

as a whole. Too often in the study of a masterpiece of literature, for instance, we fail to grasp the selection as a whole, because we become lost in the details-the allusions, the words, the phrases, the detached statements. These things may be very interesting, but they are important to us, at the particular time, only as they give us a thorough grasp of the subject we are studying. Our interest in the colonnade, the beautiful windows, the dome, must not cause us to lose sight of the beauty of the building; our interest in the several trees must not make us lose sight of the grandeur of the forest; so our interest in the details of the subject must not cause us to lose sight of the fact that the details are important only as they help us to have a complete view of the subject as a whole.

We must get away from the erroneous idea that the end of school work is to give the pupil some information regarding the subjects studied. Information is but a means to the end; if the end is not attained, the time devoted to the accumulation of information is largely wasted. Our aim is to lead the pupil to acquire an accurate conception of the subjects studied, and we should not be satisfied with giving him a little information regarding these subjects. In fact, the pupil should be expected to acquire just enough information to complete the mental picture of the subject and no more; for more than this causes confusion. When the artist has brought out every feature of the subject, he adds nothing by keeping on with the use of his brush. He is likely to spoil what he has done, and make the features appear less rather than more distinct. The teacher should know when enough details have been presented to make the picture clear. If she does not know this, she is likely to do harm by giving too much time to details.

Textbook writers too frequently put in facts because they feel that the pupil should know them, although such facts have no direct bearing on the subject studied. The teacher should be able to discern such facts and pass them over.

The pupil should be thorough in what he goes over, but that does not mean that he is to know all the facts about the subject he is studying. To be thorough, he must know the subject in all its vital relations, and the significance of the term "vital" will depend upon the point of view of the student. From the point of view of the high-school student the tariff of 1897 may be passed over with a few words; but from the standpoint of the specialist it would require volumes to dispose of it. The circulation of the blood is explained to the seventh-grader in a few pages, but the specialist reads volume after volume on it, and then leaves it with many mysteries unsolved. Thoroughness is a relative term, and its meaning depends upon the point of view of the student. The history written for the seventh-grader may properly pass silently over facts that would be regarded as essential when estimated from the high-school pupil's point of view.

There is another phase of the subject that we must not forget: both the seventh-grader and the specialist fail in so far as they fail to get a complete mental picture of the subject studied. The difference is that one leaves more for the imagination than does the other. With the seventh-grader the imagination plays an important part in filling in details; but the specialist, not being so easily satisfied with the work of the imagination, requires more real information.

All subjects should begin with an outline, and the outline should be firmly fixed in the pupil's mind as an aid to thorough comprehension. The pupil should

be taught to arrange not only the entire subject in its logical order; but he should be taught to arrange the chapters, the lessons into topics and sub-topics. In each lesson there should be a central thought. This may not be a main topic as the subject is divided; but there should be a central theme in the lesson, and particular attention should be given to the relation of that theme to the subject as a whole. The central theme should be kept constantly in mind while the pupil is studying subdivisions, and these subdivisions should be studied in their logical way. If he does not learn to study his subjects in a logical way, he gets very little good out of them. If he does not organize his ideas, they soon pass out of his mind.

The question may be asked, can young pupils study in a logical way? To admit that they cannot do so is to admit that they cannot see things in their proper relation, and everyone who knows anything about the child's mind knows that this is not true. The child can see things in their proper relation and he does so every day. If he cannot do so in his school work, such work is not suited to him. If his reading lesson is composed of literature of the right sort, it will have some central thought. No selection of literature worthy of the child's attention is composed of thoughts of equal importance; they do not stand out on one level plain; hence the child must decide which are of greater importance. This will necessitate his arranging them in their proper order. The child must discriminate between facts, ideas, suggestions, at every turn in his work and in his play, and even the casual observer will note with what facility he does so. He does not discriminate facts in his lessons, because he is not required to do so. The teacher is content with storing his mind with what she

calls useful information, and gives him no incentive to go farther. If her standards required his arranging the facts learned in their logical order, there would be no question about his doing so.

The organization of ideas is of paramount importance, not only to the student, but to the business and professional man, to the mechanic, and, indeed, to every man, it matters not what his business may be. Success in practical affairs is largely in proportion to our ability to organize our ideas. No real student studies books; his aim is the mastery, not of books, but of subjects.

THE APPLICATION OF KNOWLEDGE

We have heard a great deal about liberal versus practical education, and the friends of the old régime scorn the practical and have much to say about the liberal, as though there were a wide divergence between the two ideas. They say that the old education was liberal because it broadened man's vision and freed him from the thraldom of ignorance. But, as a matter of fact, while it may have freed him from what the followers of the old régime would call ignorance, it did not free him from real ignorance; for it is commonly recognized that the product of the old-time education was about the most ignorant person in the world of everything he ought to have known. He knew a little Latin, a little Greek, and some calculus, but when it came to those things around him, a knowledge of which would make him free indeed, he was totally ignorant. He was completely at the mercy of his environment because he did not understand it and know how to control it so as to make it serve him. Even to-day, when so much has been said and done to bring our educational system into harmony with actual conditions, the college graduate is frequently about the

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