remembered that courses of study for the city cover the work of twelve
school years in a score and more of subjects, distributed through a
hundred buildings. Only a small fraction of this comprehensive program
is going on during any week of the school year; and of this fraction
only a relatively small amount could actually be visited by one man in
the time possible to devote to the task. In the absence of records of
work done or of work projected, unduly large weight had to be given to
the recommendations set down in the latest published course of study
manual.

New courses of study were being planned for the elementary schools.
This in itself indicated that the manual could not longer be regarded
as an authoritative expression of the ideas of the administration. Yet
with the exception of a good arithmetic course and certain excellent
beginnings of a geography course, little indication could be found as
to what the details of the new courses were to be. The present report
has had to be written at a time when the administration by its acts
was rejecting the courses of study laid out in the old manual, and yet
before the new courses were formulated. Under the circumstances it
was not a safe time for setting forth the _facts_, since not even
the administration knew yet what the new courses were to be in their
details. It was not a safe time to be either praising or blaming
course of study requirements. The situation was too unformed for
either. In the matter of the curriculum, the city was confessedly
on the eve of a large constructive program. Its face was toward the
future, and not toward the past; not even toward the present.

It was felt that if the brief space at the disposal of this report
could also look chiefly toward the future, and present constructive
recommendations concerning things that observation indicated should be