260 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
spirit, I am ready to say that, with one exception, the list of subjects enumerated 
should constitute the curriculum of the elementary school. 
The omission of music from the list, it seems to me, is most unfortunate. There 
are ethical and esthetic needs in human nature that no other subject meets quite so 
well ; while the uses of music in the development of important social needs is so 
oreat as to make its absence from the elementary school nothing less than an educa- 
fional calamity. 
Dr. B. A. HinepALE, Professor of Pedagogy in the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, 
said: Mr. President—TI suppose that there is no difference of opinion on the part of those 
present that all of the subjects of consideration that are embraced in this thesis should 
certainly be embraced in an elementary school curriculum. I suppose we are all agreed 
shat there is nothing contained in this thesis that should be struck out. Such differences 
of opinion as would arise, provided we were to have a careful individual comparison of 
views, or as might arise, would arise, no doubt, from the question of what branches of 
instruction should be introduced into the thesis that are not found in it. I am not 
going to discuss that question broadly, but wish, in the first place, to observe that 
Superintendent Jones is certainly within the truth when he observes that the answer to 
it must turn, to a very considerable extent, upon the breadth and the comprehension that 
we assign to some terms that are here employed. I may illustrate that remark very 
oriefly, By the history of the country, for example, we may understand a collection 
of facts, more or less fragmentary, more or less isolated, and more or less innutritious. 
{ fear that this description that I have now given is not an inadequate description of 
what sometimes passes for instruction in the history of the.coantry in some of the 
schools of this country. Now, that is one thing ; but, on the other hand, I think by 
instruction in the history of the country we mean not merely the acquirement of a body 
of facts, but the acquirement of facts that have been wisely and discriminately chosen. 
[f, in addition, we mean the mastery of these facts in accordance with the great associat- 
ing activities of the mind, if we mean the organization and the interpretation of these 
facts in such way as to make the history of the country yield up some of the great 
tessons which that history may be made to convey, then the history of the country 
oecomes quite another thing, and we are all prepared to concede that it is a school, in a 
certain sense, of political wisdom, a school of patriotism, a school of civic duty and of 
sivic virtue. It is a school of ethics and morality, and I may even say a school of 
religion in the very largest and in a very proper acceptation of that term. 
In the second place, let me refer to the term ‘ language ” itself. It must be clear to all 
of us that the eommittee that arranged the programme intended that this term should 
be taken comprehensiveiy, for nothing is said about literature, and nothing is said about 
reading in the thesis ; and undoubtedly we are to understand that these things are 
included in the term ‘‘language ” ; that is, the art of reading and the literature of the 
language, 
I was gratified, for one, that the Superintendent in his remarks called our attention, 
rather incidentally, to the fact that there are certain things in this thesis that, properly 
understood, are rather arts than studies. They are rather arts than studies, if by a study 
we mean a content study ; if by a study we mean something in correspondence to a 
science, a body of organized knowledge ; then manifestly reading, in the sense in which 
[ use the expression, is an art and not a study, properly so-called, in the same sense 
that geography or science or history or any branch of mathematics is a study. Writing 
or penmanship is obviously an art. It is not an art of acquirement as reading is, but 
an art of representation. Either one of these arts brings one in relation with the minds 
of others ; but reading considered as an art brings one into relation with the mind of 
another, in the sense that he acquires something from him ; whereas writing, properly