262 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF EDUCATION. 
as a science, it can only be of use to us in a practical field, in a subordinate and second- 
ary degree. 
The practical application of all that I have been saying is merely this: That if we 
could get it into the heads of the educators of the country that language is an art, and 
that people learn it by way of imitation, and that the reflective study of grammar can 
only be of advantage in later years, and then only in a secondary and subsidiary sense, 
we should have made a very considerable stride in the direction of answering the ques- 
tion as to whether we should teach formal or technical grammar or not. My obser- 
vation is, that those people use good language, conversationally and in writing, who 
aave been brought up in intelligent homes where good language is used, who have been 
;aught to read good books, and who have moved in society where they have been early 
ntroduced to a liberal range of ideas, expressed in comely, vigorous, and measurably 
correct English. That is the beginning of the matter, and there is a lesson in it of 
practical import for the teachers of the country generally, 
WHAT SHOULD BE THE CURRICULUM IN PUBLIC 
SCHOOLS?—SOME ASPECTS OF THE QUESTION IN 
FRANCE. 
3Y 
B. BUISSON, DELEGATE FROM THE MINISTRY OF PUBLIC INSTRUC- 
[ION IN FRANCE, TO THE WORLD’S COLUMBIAN EXPOSITION AND THE 
EDUCATIONAL CONGRESSES. 
WHAT shall be the plan of work for a common public school? In what 
shall the curriculum of primary instruction consist ? By the word 
primary, let it be remembered, we, in France, understand not merely the 
primary or lower grades of a common school, but also what you call here 
grammar grades, and even that side of the high school which is non- 
classical. 
(By the way, would it not be a proper thing at this international congress 
co try to come to some international understanding about the definition 
of such terms as those of primary and secondary instruction ; and is it not 
to be wished that we may adopt some common terminology about educa- 
Sion as far as possible ?) 
But this is a parenthesis which I have rashly opened, and which I must 
promptly close, to come back to our purpose of this morning, the school 
curriculum of the primary, that is to say, the elementary, public school— 
the school destined for the great need of children between six and fourteen 
years of age. And yet if they would all stay at school until they are fully 
fourteen years old, the difficulty in providing them with a well-devised 
scheme of work would be more easily overcome. But unfortunately—at 
least such is not the case in France—many of them, having got their certif- 
icates of proficiency in elementary studies, leave the school before they 
are thirteen, and sometimes even as early as twelve years, and this hurry is 
a considerable cause of embarrassment to those who have to plan the