the two chief problems of educational practice concern the selection and the arrangement or organization of the educative[21] material. the problem of the organization of the subject-matter is spoken of as correlation or concentration. any proposal silent on this point would not be adequate to the best school thought or practice of the hour.
the main contention over this question hinges on what subject should be taken as a center around which other lines of instruction should be gathered. against the proposition to use the historical or culture-historical material as such a center objections can easily be raised. it will be granted that it does not offer an ideal point of departure for all the activities of even the primary school. it will be granted further that such a center is not the true center of the social life. it is liable to over-emphasize the purely intellectual side of instruction at the expense of the volitional phases, and it cannot be a center for the correlation of number.
but mathematics and literature do not correlate. arithmetic and formal science have arisen in dealing with the practical problems of industrial processes. they are forms which industrial processes have taken on. there are some reasonable objections to the correlation of what is called “construction work” with this literature material.
but, on the whole, the narrative, or story, offers, under present conditions, the only practicable center for correlation in the first school year. especially since, at this period, formal[22] number work and science proper are at their minimum. for the language arts,—reading, writing, spelling, exercises in oral speech,—it is the natural medium. the aesthetic arts,—drawing and music—and even construction work, can be correlated here without undue violence to instruction as an organic unity. this material, too, furnishes at least a point of departure for what is known as nature study. it will find abundant inspiration in the animals, plants, and natural objects alluded to.
from what has been said, it will be seen that the stories are to be used as a medium of instruction, not just told and enjoyed. they are to be regarded as subject-matter to be assimilated and expressed. they provide a content by means of which the various school arts may reverse their usual direction and become, so to speak, centrifugal—the spontaneous outflowing of the self.
merely telling the story does not exhaust its possibilities. it should be made a means for the exercise of the entire round of childish activities. unless the understanding is enlarged, the sympathies widened, the ethical sense deepened, and steady advance made in all lines of technique, the teacher will miss the true aim.
