ccessively, each
time adding new facts to the original nucleus. There is an old proverb
that "repetition is the mother of studies," and here we have a
systematic plan for repetition, extending through the school course,
with the advantage of new and interesting facts to add to the grist
each time it is sent through the mill. It is an attractive plan at
first sight, but if we appeal to experience, are we not reminded rather
that it was dull repetition of names, boundaries, map questions,
location of places, etc., and after all not much detailed knowledge was
gained even in the higher grades? Again, is it not contrary to reason
to begin with definitions and general notions in the lower grades and
end up with the interesting and concrete in the higher?

In language lessons and grammar it has been customary to learn the
kinds of sentence and the parts of speech in a simple form in the third
and fourth grades and in each succeeding year to review these topics,
gradually enlarging and expanding the definitions, inflections, and
constructions into a fuller etymology and syntax. In United States
history we are beginning to adopt a similar plan of repetitions, and
the frequent reviews in arithmetic are designed to make good the lack
of thoroughness and mastery which should characterize each successive
grade of work. The course of religious instruction given in European
schools is based upon the same reiteration year by year of essential
religious ideas. The whole plan, as illustrated by different studies,
is based upon a successive enlargement of a subject in concentric
circles with the implied constant repetition and strengthening of
leading ideas. A framework of important notions in each branch is kept
before the mind year after year, repeated, explained, enlarged, with
faith in a constantly increasing depth of meaning. There is no doubt
that under good teaching the principle of the concentric circles
produces some excellent fruits, a mastery of the subject, and a
concentration of ideas within the limits of a single study.

The disciples of Herbart, while admitting the merits of the concentric
circles, have subjected the plan to a severe _criticism_. They say it
begins with general and abstract notions and puts off the interesting
details to the later years, while any correct method with children will
take the interesting particulars first, will collect abundant concrete
materials, and by a gradual process of compari