of these phrases are at once too wide and too narrow. They are too wide
because they ignore the spontaneous activity of the child and the
extra-scholastic forces of mind-training, and they are too narrow
because they ignore the fact that we do not progress far with our
thoughts unless we throw them out into objective existence by means of
words, diagrams, models, trial essays. Even if we do not talk to others
we must, silently or vocally or visibly, talk to ourselves at least to
get on. To acquire the means of intercourse is to learn to think, so
far as learning goes in the matter.] It is only secondarily--so far as
schooling goes--or, at any rate, subsequently, that the idea of
shaping, or, at least, helping to shape, the expanded natural man into
a citizen, comes in. It is only as a subordinate necessity that the
school is a vehicle for the inculcation of facts. The facts come into
the school not for their own sake, but in relation to intercourse. It
is only upon a common foundation of general knowledge that the
initiated citizens of an educated community will be able to communicate
freely together. With the net of this phrase, "widening the range of
intercourse," I think it is possible to gather together all that is
essential in the deliberate purpose of schooling. Nothing that remains
outside is of sufficient magnitude to be of any importance in the
small-scale sketch of human development we are now making:--

If we take this and hold to it as a guide, and explore a scheme of
school work, in the direction it takes us, we shall find it shaping
itself (for an English-speaking citizen) something after this fashion:
--

_A_. Direct means of understanding and expression.
1. Reading.
2. Writing.