Show tendencies IN EDUCATION the principal difference between what the public schools teach today and what they taught a generation ago Is in the immensely greater equipment imparted tm parted today in history and literature tho average school hoy of ten knows more about these most important branches of education than the high school student knew some thirty years ago this Is a matter that can very easily be tested by asking questions of tha children themselves all the great names of history literature and mythology are cnown to them they learn about homers heroes and beautiful tales and the griat names of classical lore that used to be reserved tor the academic or collegiate course it Is a noble work these could be none nobler next in importance to the general knowledge of history and literature our youth are taught today djs the important teaching of accomplishments like modern languages music business forms manual training who ever undertakes to dismiss these studies contemptuously as fads and brills trills betrays a very imperfect understanding of modern life and of the advantages these accomplishments impart to their fortunate possessor who does not know what aid and comfort the young person of cither sex derives from a knowledge of music who Is not familiar with the truism of business life that every young american should know at least one modern language who does not know how much wisdom there s in training iho hand and eye nerves and muscles of the young as well as the intellectual faculties and set all this scientifically sound and practically beneficent work is called in question and denounced because there are poor spellers and poor writers and poor mathematicians are poor spellers then a new species in the fauna of business life and was illegible penmanship unknown to a former age A little revival of memory will show tho folly of cheso complaints pla ints A little reflection will suggest that faculties deficient in variant types of mind are not to be stimulated or made over again by ignoring the many useful improvements with which talented men and devoted women in the teaching profession have enriched tho lives of our children certainly it would not bo maintained that the boy or girl agnor ant of german music and the rudiments of mechanics can write pr spell better for that ignorance than the more fortunate mate who has learned them it seems to us that the modern curriculum offers a fair and final settle of the old controversy over classical studies all that Is grand and noble all that is helpful and inspiring in the lives of he great and good of former times can be learned now and is taught now without such devotion to the dead languages as forbids the study of more practical modern languages and the other accomplishments that equip and the other accomplishments that equip the youth BO well today tor the increasingly battle of life and as to tha perennial value of those alba mines of ancient lore we shall never have a truer or more touching tribute than the moving appeal idt lord maccaulay Mar caulay by the lonely lamp of erasmus by the restless bed of pascal in the tribute of Ml in the cell of galleo on tho scaffold of sidney who shall say how many thousands have been mado wiser happier and better by those pursuits in which she has taught man hind to engage to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty liberty in bondage health la sickness so clety in solitude aher ever literature consoles sorrow or as pain wherever it brings glad ness to eyes which tall with wakeful ness and tears and ache for the dart house and the long there Is ex in its noblest form tho immor tal influence of athens |