Friend, 1776), which was described on page 217 in connection with the secularizing of German schools. This book contained short instructional stories and discussions relating to agriculture, domestic affairs, and good citizenship.

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Webster's" Third Part" (1785), the first American secular reader. According to Reeder, "The first reading book corresponding to Rochow's 'Kinderfreund' in American schools was Webster's 'Third Part' published in 1785." (21: 19.) The complete title of Webster's reader was An American Selection of Lessons in Reading and Speaking, calculated to improve the mind and refine the taste of youth, and also to instruct them in Geography, History and Politics of the United States. To which are prefixed rules in Elocution, and directions for expressing the principal passions of the mind. Being the third part of A Grammatical Institute of the English Language by Noah Webster, Jr., Esquire." Webster's speller, which was described in Chapter IV, was the "First Part" of this " Grammatical Institute."

Other readers. - Caleb Bingham was the second author of such American secular readers, and his "American Preceptor" (1794) and "Columbian Orator" (1797) were as popular as Webster's reader. Both of these authors appealed primarily to the patriotic sentiment which followed the Revolutionary War, and emphasized the element of oratory as a prominent factor in the social life of democratic representative governments. There was little attention to general secular literature. In the first quarter of the nineteenth century the three-book series of readers by Lindley Murray became very popular. In this series some attention was given to general literature, but the oratorical idea was still prominent. Moreover, much material intended for direct moral instruction was included, such as lessons on gratitude, gentleness, a suspicious temper," "mortification of vice,' the immortality of the soul," etc., together with Bible stories. Following Murray, there developed a tendency to grade the readers

according to children's abilities. The most important of these graded series was that of John Pierpont, which was published in four books between 1820 and 1830, and was very popular until after the middle of the century. In this series literary selections were made from the best English and American writers. Many other series of readers were issued, but they possessed no striking novel characteristics. As Reeder says:

In examining the contents of these various series, one encounters a dreary sameness, notwithstanding the effort of each compiler to differentiate his series, and to give it distinct commercial and academic or commercial points. (21: 51.)

Sometimes, especially in the early part of the century, the readers emphasized geographical, historical, and practical information, but this tendency declined somewhat as these subjects came to be represented in the schools by special textbooks. At the present time such "informational readers" are still used, but they are commonly known as supplementary geography and history readers, and are more directly related to these subjects than to reading and literature.

Reading considered primarily as oral reading. Silent reading neglected. It seems a curious fact, but down to the end of the nineteenth century reading in the elementary schools was considered primarily as a matter of oral expression. This oratorical point of view was suggested in the names of many of the earlier readers, such as Bingham's "Columbian Orator"; and most of the books placed especial emphasis upon it by claiming some especial virtue in training in distinct articulation, elocution, etc. Silent reading and an acquaintance with a wide range of literature and the development of habits of wide general reading were all sacrificed (and still are in many places) to training in oral reading.

Reading of many whole literary classics in elementary schools since 1890.- Since about 1890 there has developed a strong tendency to depart from the practice of confining reading in the schools to the oral expression of what is seen

on the printed page. A rapid reading of a wide range of literature is becoming popular. A few of the factors which have been influential in developing this practice will be discussed.

President Eliot's account of waste of time in elementary schools. About 1890 President C. W. Eliot (1834-) of Harvard University, one of the most influential personal factors in the development of higher education in the United States, conducted a vigorous campaign in favor of an enrichment of the elementary-school curriculum. One of the most effective of his efforts in this direction was his essay entitled “An Average Massachusetts Grammar School," published in 1890. In this essay he reported a quantitative study of the amount of intellectual material that children were made acquainted with in the last six years of the elementary school. In this connection he said:

I turned next to an examination of the quantity of work done in the grammar school under consideration — and, first, of the amount of reading. The amount of time given to reading and the study of the English language through the spelling book and the little grammar which are used in that school, and through a variety of other aids to the learning of English, is thirty-seven per cent of all school time during six years. But what is the amount of reading in this time? I procured two careful estimates of the time it would take a graduate of a high school to read aloud consecutively all the books which are read in this school during six years, including the history, the reading lessons in geography, and the book on manners. The estimates were made by two persons reading aloud at a moderate rate, and reading everything that the children in most of the rooms of that school have been supposed to read during their entire course of six years. The time occupied in doing this reading was forty-six hours. These children had, therefore, been more than two solid years of school time in going through what an ordinary highschool graduate can read aloud in forty-six hours. . . . How small an acquaintance adults would make with English literature if their reading during six years were limited in amount [to this extent]. This test

is, of course, a very rough and inadequate one,

some clue to the very limited acquaintance with literature which the children get in the entire course of six years. (22: 185.)

Eliot and Scudder recommended literature in place of readers. Pursuing the matter further, President Eliot made the following radical suggestions concerning the use of school readers :

It would be for the advancement of the whole public school system if every reader were hereafter to be absolutely excluded from the school. I object to them because they are not real literature; they are but mere scraps of literature, even when the single lessons or materials of which they are composed are taken from literature. But there are a great many readers that seem to have been composed especially for the use of children. They are not made up of selections from recognized literature, and as a rule this class is simply ineffable trash. They are entirely unfit material to use in the training of our children. The object of reading with children is to convey to them the ideals of the human race; our readers do not do that and are thoroughly unfitted to do it. I believe that we should substitute in all our schools real literature for readers. (23: 145.)

President Eliot may have been independent to a considerable extent in making this suggestion, but a number of other expressions of the same idea were published about the same time. One of the most widely read of these was a book on "Literature in the Schools " by H. E. Scudder (1837-1902), published in 1888. Scudder argued at great length for the study of complete English classics in elementary schools and said:

The continuous reading of a classic is in itself a liberal education; the fragmentary reading of commonplace lessons in minor morals, such as make up most of our reading books, is a pitiful waste of growing mental powers.

Committee of Fifteen (1895) represented both points of view. The practice advocated by Eliot and Scudder had not been adopted very generally by 1895. This is shown by the report of the Committee of Fifteen on elementary education from the National Educational Association made in that year. In the section on English the committee recommended the ordinary method of using readers, but William Maxwell, then superintendent of the schools of Brooklyn, N.Y., took

exception in a minority report to this recommendation, and said, "For the study of literature complete works are to be preferred to the selections found in the readers" (p. 112).

American Herbartians have helped the movement for whole classics. The American Herbartians are commonly mentioned as influential in popularizing this practice of using complete literary classics in elementary schools. Just as in the case of using history materials in the lower grades, however, it is difficult to determine how large a factor their influence has been. The publication of C. A. McMurry's "Special Method in the Reading of English Classics" (1903) is perhaps the most definite contribution to the movement by an Herbartian. The following quotation from this book (p. 41) will serve to make the general practice more concrete :

With the increasing tendency to consider the literary quality and fitness of the reading matter used in school, longer poems and stories like Snow Bound," "Rip Van Winkle," "Hiawatha,” " Aladdin," "The Courtship of Miles Standish," "The Great Stone Face," and even " Lady of the Lake" and "Julius Caesar" are read and studied as complete wholes. Many of the books now used as reading books are not collections of short selections and extracts, as formerly, but editions of single poems or kindred groups, like "Sohrab and Rustum" or the "Arabian Nights" or "Gulliver's Travels " or a collection of complete stories or poems by a single author, as Hawthorne's "Stories of the White Hills " or Lowell's "Vision of Sir Launfal" and other poems. Even the regular series of readers are often made up largely of longer poems and prose masterpieces.

In the lower grades nursery rimes, "Mother Goose," and other literary classics of childhood are used. The wide acquaintance with general literature which is secured by such a course of study as McMurry described contrasts very strongly with the meager acquaintance to which President Eliot called attention in 1890.

Correlation. Ziller advocated concentration around a few centers. We noted above that while Herbart advocated certain amount of correlation, for example, mathematics being