ABSTRACT
The curriculum of the elementary school expands above the third grade through the introduction of geography and history. In some elementary schools pupils are given instruction in the upper grades in the rudiments of the physical and social sciences. These enlargements of the program of instruction often result in a certain discontinuity in the thinking of pupils. Discontinuity becomes extreme with the transition into the secondary school. Algebra takes the place of arithmetic. Instruction in reading is entirely abandoned, and English composition and foreign languages appear as new subjects different in their contents and methods from the subjects studied by pupils in the elementary school. In history discontinuity usually results from the fact that the elementary school teaches the history of the United States whereas the secondary school turns to a totally different period of world-history. The later years of the secondary-school curriculum become increasingly diversified in their instructional materials; pupils not infrequently become bewildered and develop intellectual methods that are very different from the methods of systematic study and coherent thinking which education aims to cultivate.
