grammatical perspective, but this training need not be so extensive and intensive
as at present. The time saved should be given to oral and written expression in
connection with the reading of history, geography, industrial studies, civics,
sanitation, and the like. Facility and accuracy in oral and written expression are
developed through practice rather than through precept. They are perfected
through the conscious and unconscious imitation of good models rather than
through the advanced study of technical grammar. Only as knowledge is put to
work is it really learned or assimilated.
- Cleveland gives more time to mathematics than does the average city. The
content of courses in mathematics is to be determined by human needs. A
fundamental need of our scientific age is more accurate quantitative thinking
about our vocations, civic problems, taxation, income, insurance, expenditures,
public improvements, and the multitude of other public and private problems
involving quantities. We need to think accurately and easily in quantities,
proportions, forms, and relationships. Arithmetic teaching, like the teaching of
penmanship, is for the purpose of providing tools to be used in matters that lie
beyond. The present course of study is of superior character, providing for
efficient elementary training and dispensing with most of the things of little
practical use. The greatest improvement in the work is to be found in its further
carrying over into the other fields of school work and in applying it in other
classes as well as in the arithmetic class. In the advanced classes mathematics
should be differentiated according to the needs of different pupils. Algebra
should be more closely related to practical matters and developed in connection
with geometry and trigonometry. - History receives much less attention in this city than in the average city. The
character of the work is really indicated by the last sentence of the eighth-grade
history assignment: "The text of our book should be thoroughly mastered." The
work is too brief, abstract, and barren to help the pupils toward an understanding
of the social, political, economic, and industrial problems with which we are
confronted. It should be amply supplemented by a wide range of reading on
social welfare topics. This reading should be biographical, anecdotal, thrilling
dramas of human achievement, rich with human interest. It should be at every
stage on the level with the understanding and degree of maturity of the pupils so
that much reading can be covered rapidly. - In Cleveland, where there has been an almost unequalled amount of civic
discussion and progressive human-welfare effort, the teaching of civics in the