by his profound philosophy of life, he is the great link in the chain of traditional culture which has been forging from the days of Homer, Sophocles, Virgil, Dante, on down to the present day. Young people should realize this when they study a play of Shakespeare. Each recitation should have some reaction in their own lives, and as they go to the theatre today, for go they will, this study should give them keener judgment to discern dramatic values, to distinguish the good from the bad, and to cultivate sound, noble taste. Midsummer Song See, o'er the valleys White where the daisies Softly the veil of the distance Die in crystal trills. Everywhere are blooming Crowds of dewy roses; Faintly flushed and deep red roses O beautiful midsummer! The earth's heart pours its treasures That wake her frozen life to blush Such bloom across the land! Now doth the season's fullness Tide all the air with dreaming, As if the eyes most dear were beaming, HELEN CARY CHADWICK. Some Principles of Curriculum-Making MAY H. PRENTICE, KENT STATE NORMAL SCHOOL, KENT, OHIO. CHANGE of the utmost significance, amounting indeed to a revolution, is evidenced in even a A cursory examination of the field of present-day curriculum-making. Sometimes the change is of the we-don't-know-where-we're-going-butwe're-on-the-way type; in most instances, at best, it is incomplete; but at the bottom there is always the hopeful stirring of a thought: the thought that education for each individual is simply his best organization and reorganization of his own experience. Achievements, attainments, information, knowledge, skills, were the body of the old curriculum. Institutes and normal schools urged, it is true, the "cultivation of character," but this was a detached activity, largely to be taken care of in morning exercises and by didactic teaching; and little relation was traced between the process of learning the three R's and the development of an admirable and socially valuable personality. Having stated these two diverse ends, the old curriculum rested content, omitting the consideration of the experience of which they are the resultants. The three inter-related divisions of the curriculum which seem to be required by modern educational thought may be briefly stated in general terms as follows: I. Ultimate ends, stated in terms of personality and power for social service. II. Contributing ends,-specific aims. These are the attitudes, skills, knowledge, attain ments, and developed powers which should mark a child's school progress. They grow into (I). They grow out of (III). They themselves are objectives which determine (III). III. Prevised and predetermined experiences and activities which result in (II) and eventually in (I). Since the rest of the curriculum grows out of (III) controlled by (II) and (I), it is necessary to think what the possibilities of experience are. Our acts are guided by our needs; in the child's case by his more immediate needs, among which some of the more easily recognizable are: 1. Healthful conditions (only blindly recognized by the child). 2. Motor activity,—an overwhelming need. 3. Contact with nature. 4. Social contacts and relationships. 5. Opportunity for the enjoyment of beauty. 6. Instruments for the achievement of purposes,-skills, knowledge. 7. Opportunity for self-expression. 8. Guidance both sympathetic and competent. 9. Such spiritual contacts as result in the formation of worthy ideals. 10. Oportunity for the exercise of judgment, choice, purpose, creative imagination, self-directed execution, self-evaluation of results. 11. The largest possible measure of physical, mental and moral freedom-freedom always implying self-direction under a sense of oughtness. Illustrative of the growth of the immediate needs of the child into subject-matter with its values, the need, motor activity, may be considered in a few of its phases. If allowed its natural right to lead, it develops into play, physical education, construction, the doing side of all subjects, dramatization. It brings such values as easy, controlled bearing, grace, rhythmical movement, joy, stimulant, health-giver, knowledge of qualities of matter, knowledge of meaning and significance of things, control of things and forces, becoming, through representation. Accepting those needs of childhood previously mentioned as universal, so far as normal childhood is concerned, it is yet true that the individual's possibilities of experience rest upon 1. Racial inheritance. 2. 3. Individual inheritance. The kind of world in which the child lives: a. material, of things and forces; b. human,—of people and social relationships; c. spiritual,-of attitudes. Children in the same class in school, even of the same family, live in very different worlds. Through these experiences in these three worlds into which the child is led by his immediate (and later, his remoter) needs, are built up those attitudes, powers, skills and will which satisfy the child's eventual needs. Some of these eventual needs are: 4. Sensitiveness to beauty of all kinds, ability to enjoy and to give pleasure. 5. Ability to think logically. 6. Steadily-growing control of environment. 7. 8. Self-determination under a feeling of oughtness. A true sense of worth. 9. Understanding of and sympathy with humanity. Since subject-matter in this outline must be thought of as the experiences and activities suggested under (III) and represented at their various psychological peaks or points of culmination in (II) and reaching their highest point in (I), it follows that a most difficult task of the curriculum-maker is the determining this curriculum of experiences and activities, and that it must necessarily be open to ready modification to suit individual possibilities. The relation of representative kinds of subject matter to Hygiene, practice of health habits. dramatization of situations where care is needed, Nature study-first-hand, through the senses. Elementary science,-experiments and discoveries of Geography, discovering necessary effect of geographical conditions on man's mode of life. Agriculture, gardening, etc. |