Sir Philip Magnus, in a recent address on Headwork and Handwork in Elementary Schools, says some things worth pondering. Perhaps he gives his workshop too big a place in the school of the future, but certainly he puts his finger on the weak point in the work of both elementary and secondary schools—the ‘getting by heart scraps of knowledge, fragments of so-called science.’ And we are with him in the emphasis he lays upon _reading and writing_; it is through these that even school ‘studies’ shall become ‘for delight.’ Writing, of course, comes of reading, and nobody can write well who does not read much. Sir Philip Magnus says,[22] speaking of the schools of the future:—“We shall no longer require children to learn by constant repetition, scraps of history, geography, and grammar, nor try to teach them fragments of so-called science. The daily hours devoted to these tasks will be applicable to the creation of mental aptitudes, and will be utilised in showing the children how to obtain knowledge for themselves.... In future the main function of education will be to train our hands and our sense organs and intellectual faculties, so that we may be placed in a position of advantage for seeking knowledge.... The scope of the lessons will be enlarged. Children will be taught to read in order that they may desire to read, and to write that they may be able to write.... It will be the teacher’s aim to create in his pupils a desire for knowledge, and consequently a love of reading, and to cultivate in them, by a proper selection of lessons, the pleasure which reading may be made to yield. The main feature of the reading lesson will be to show the use of books, how they may be consulted to ascertain what other people have said or done, and how they may be read for the pleasure they afford. The storing of the memory with facts is no part of elementary school work.... It is not enough that a child should learn how to write, he must know _what_ to write. He must learn to describe clearly what he has heard or seen, to transfer to written language his sense-impressions, and to express concisely his own thoughts.” We should like to add a word to Sir Philip Magnus’s conception, emphasising the _habit_ of reading as a chief acquirement of school life. It is only those who have read who do read.