One of the greatest educational problems of the present generation is that of the overcrowded condition of the elementaryschool course of study. This problem has been grappled with very effectively in the past few years by committees of the National Education Association and by others, but much remains to be done. The excuse for the present discussion of the problem lies in the attempt to suggest lines of attack which have had little or no emphasis but which, in the opinion of the writer, are

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... ry fundamental. The key to much of the work which has been done is "elimination." The existing list of elementary-school subjects has been gone over with extreme care in an attempt to retain essentials and to omit non-essentials. In this way an enormous amount of material has been dropped by the schools, time has been gained, and hurry and waste avoided. There is no doubt about the great value of such work. It is the main thesis of this paper that the benefits thus derived would be greatly enhanced if a large amount of reorganization of subjects were to precede and supplement the attempts at elimination) Reorganization affecting the number of school subjects will first be considered. The matter has been little discussed, yet anyone who will take the trouble to analyze the present situation can come to but one conclusion. The elementary school is dealing with two or three times the necessary number of subjects. This will be evident to anyone who will take fifteen or twenty elementary-school courses of study and make a list of all of the subjects which are outlined in any one of them. Such an examination will not fail to produce a list something like that which follows. This list may seem exaggerated, and in a sense it is, for not all of these subjects are taught coincidently. 678