Excerpt from Below the High School: Printed as Manuscript, for the Use of the Students of the Illinois State Normal University But what should the first year's work consist of? This must be determined by the needs of the children and the conditions of early school life. That it should not consist of exercises designed to introduce and teach the formalities of language, I most firmly believe. Diluted grammar for little children I regard as about the least nourishing mental food that could be presented to them. To make the work consist mostly of exercises designed to teach form alone, would be to violate sound pedagogical principles of language training, and would conserve, so far as I can see, no useful end which could not be better if not more directly reached by means more consistent with the child's true welfare. It may, indeed, happen, that valuable lessons upon thought relations can be introduced to very young pupils, as for instance the various place relations expressed by certain prepositions, but to give exercises in order to introduce grammatical terms, such as noun, verb, adverb, complement, etc., I regard as very unfruitful work. Our children have danced long enough to the grammatical tune. In these lessons, therefore, there will be constant effort to hold mere formalities in the background, to introduce them mainly in connection with later written work, and then only as they force themselves into notice. Having determined what the work should not be, it now becomes our duty to consider what it should be. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.