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,............