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Literature
Readers....

HARRY PRATT JUDSON, LL.D.,

Dean of the Faculties of
Arts, Literature, and
Science, University of
Chicago.

and

DR. IDA C. BENDER,

Supervisor of Primary
Grades in the Public
Schools of Buffalo, N. Y.

From the Report of the Committee on Text-Books-Included in the Latest Report of the Board of Education, Washington, D. C.

Numerous readers were furnished for examination, many of them most attractive and of a high literary order. After a careful consideration your committee selected the first, second, third, fourth and fifth books of Judson and Bender's Graded Literature Readers, published by Maynard, Merrill & Co., which we considered superior to all others and best adapted for our purpose.

In selecting the above books, we postponed our final determination until able to secure the opinion and advice of the superintendent, the assistant superintendents, and the supervising principals. It was most gratifying to your committee to find that the selections made by them met with the unanimous approval of the officers of the schools. We may add, with some pardonable pride, that since our action the books named have been introduced into the schools of many of the larger cities of our

country, the wisdom of our selection having thus received a quasi indorsement.

或剪 或频

CHARLES T. ALEXANDER, Southern Manager,

212-214 Commerce Street, DALLAS, TEXAS.

Or MAYNARD, MERRILL & CO., Publishers,

29, 31 and 33 East 19th Street, NEW YORK CITY.

VOLUME XX.

81762

MAY, 1903.

No. 11.

ELECTIVES AND ELECTIVE STUDIES IN THE HIGH SCHOOL.

THOS. B. KENDRICK, INSTRUCTOR IN LATIN, DALLAS HIGH SCHOOL.

The elective system which has become well established within the last eighteen years in our universities and high schools, is not what it has been denominated by its opponents, a patent medicine for the cure of all mental weaknesses which have heretofore infected secondary and higher education. The opponents of the system have named it variously, as a fad, a bid for popularity, a play to the galleries, a running after strange gods. The doctrine of the elective plan has received impulse from one standing high in educational affairs, namely, Dr. Eliot, President of Harvard University, and has spread to other colleges and universities and high. schools, no doubt, because the time was ripe for it.

The elective system is an expression of our modern understanding of what education really is. The notion that education is an accumulation of facts about a certain subject or subjects has been set aside; the idea that education is a sort of fine accomplishment, not necessarily a useful thing, yet a nice thing for a gentleman, a kind of luxury, has been done away with; the notion that there is no real education without a rigid training in Latin and Greek, has also been set aside. What then is our modern definition of education? We believe that education means a realization of one's possibilities, a growth and development, "a stimulating to some line of thought and action"; or, as it has been summed up in a homely phrase, "getting a move on yourself in some direction.”

These questions then present themselves: Is the elective plan more consistent with this modern notion of education? Does it offer better advantages than the standard, fixed courses for this

development and growth? And is it possibe in a fixed course to avoid having subjects which are not adapted and which are even impossible for a great number of pupils? Do we not find in our high schools many boys who are bright in mathematics and science but have no talent in English and Latin? And do we not find that a majority of our girls convert geometry into memory work? Is it wise for us to try to make mathematicians out of these girls, and Latin and English students out of these boys when the result is that they loose interest in their school work and drop out?

The elective system in one form or another is in vogue in almost every college and high school in the United States; it is more than a mere fad; it has come to stay; hence it is a universally important subject. To us, high school teachers and principals, it is important as a high school subject; we wish to know to what extent an elective plan of work is desirable or practical in our high schools; and whether it affords better advantages than the standard fixed courses for educating our youth as we think they should be educated.

In our high schools we find these gradations of the elective plan: the parallel Latin and English courses; the Major and Minor courses; the Core of Constants, and the absolutely free choice of subjects. The parallel Latin and English courses are the most prevalent, and are elective only in this respect that they allow the parent and pupil to select at once the entire list of studies for four years. The absolutely free choice of subjects allows the parent and pupil with the advice of the teacher to select by installments, that is for one year or half year, the different studies

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