3d Grade. The patriarchs, Stories of Thuringia. Abraham, Joseph, Moses.
4th Grade. Judges and Kings. The Nibelungen Song, Samuel, Saul, David, Siegfried. Solomon.
5th Grade. Life of Christ. Henry I., Charlemagne, Boniface, Armenius.
6th Grade. Life of Christ. Teutonic migrations, Crusades, Attila, Barbarossa, Rudolph.
7th Grade. Life of Paul. Discovery of America, Reformation, Thirty Years' War.
8th Grade. Life of Luther. Frederick the Great, Wars against Napoleon, William I.
The above outline is Ziller's plan, modified by Professor Rein.
In each grade is selected a body of classical or choice historical materials, representing a great period of German as well as of Jewish or Christian life, and especially suited to interest and instruct children, while illustrating moral ideas and deepening moral convictions. The body of historical narrative selected for any one grade is calculated to form a _center_ or nucleus for concentrating all the studies of that year. Reading, language, geography, drawing, music, and arithmetic largely spring out of and depend upon this historical center, while they are also bound to each other by many links of connection. A full course for the eight grades of the common school, with this double historical series as a nucleus, has been carefully worked out and applied by Professor Rein and his associates. It has been applied also with considerable success in a number of German schools.
This great undertaking has had to run the gauntlet of a severe _criticism_. Its fundamental principles, as well as its details of execution, have been sharply questioned. But a long-continued effort, extending through many years, by able and thoroughly-equipped teachers, to solve one of the greatest problems of education, deserves careful attention. The general theory of concentration, the selection and value of the materials, the previous history of method, and the best present method of treating each subject, with detailed illustrations, are all worked out with great care and ability.
The Jewish and German historical materials, which are made the moral-educative basis of the common school course by the Herbartians, can be of no service to us except by way of example. Neither sacred nor German history can form any important part of an American course of study. Religious instruction has been relegated to the church, and German history touches us indirectly if at all. The epochs of history from which American schools must draw are chiefly those of the United States and Great Britain. France, Germany, Italy, and Greece may furnish some collateral matter, as the story of Tell, of Siegfried, of Alaric, and of Ulysses; but some of the leading epochs must be those of our own national history.