In the fifth and sixth years the study of industries is continued, but the scope is extended to include the principal industries of the world. Here, of course, pupils must learn to substitute more and more the printed page for their former excursions. This includes drill in reading, writing, and mathematics, related to earlier studies, and also more and more geography. The use of the library becomes of great importance, for the pupils are not given one text-book from which they study and recite. Work in geography begins with this question: What becomes of the things made in this town, which we do not use up? The next step is: Where else are these same things made, and are they made in the same way? What else is made in that place and how is it done? Then, where and how are the things made that we get from elsewhere? No one text-book could suffice for this work, and if it did it would contradict the idea of the school that the children should learn by investigation. They must find for themselves from among the books in the library the ones that tell about the particular industry they are studying. Every child does not read the same book, and as far as possible each pupil makes some contribution to the discussion. Just as in the lower grades, the older pupils all make folders where they keep their descriptions of the industries and illustrations of machines and processes.
In the seventh and highest grade in the school, the study of industries is continued as history; that is, the history of the industries connected with clothing, feeding, and housing is taken up. The pupils study the history of shelter from the first beginnings with a cave or a brush thicket, through the tents of the wandering tribes and the Greek and Roman house, to the steel skyscraper of to-day. They study the history of agriculture and learn to understand the development of the steam reaper and thresher from the wooden stick of the savage. The study of the industries in these four higher grades includes a study of the institutions of government. The fourth grade studies the local post-office, in the fifth and sixth they study the mail system of the United States, and then how letters are carried to all parts of the world. The seventh grade studies the history of some of these institutions. Part of their time during the past year was devoted to finding out how the different peoples of the world have fought their battles and organized their armies, first by means of reading and then by discussing what they had read. Each pupil kept a record of this work, writing a short paper on the army of each country he studied and illustrating it as he cared to.