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I concluded that this must be an off day with the school; but thought I might as well stay and see them start, they seemed to be having such a good time.

At nine o'clock a bell rang, and the children went to various rooms, where I saw some one was marking their attendance. I was surprised to find that there were not more than ten children with any one teacher; and that instead of the absolute silence I had considered the proper beginning of school, the children merely took their places in what seemed to be a recognized order, and continued their conversation. Then the "leader" was

given a program for the day.

I concluded that not all were going to the picnic and that I would stay and see what I could. I followed the children to the gymnasium, where seats were arranged for the morning exercises, which consisted chiefly of singing. One or two groups of children were asked to sing their "Group Song " Upon inquiry I was told that the charming little melody and the words of the songs I heard were composed by the children who sang them. All the "leaders," as they took their groups to various rooms after the singing, seemed to have programs for the day; and I concluded that the picnic had been postponed, and felt sorry for the children with the sandwiches and fruit. Upstairs I found a group of children about ten years old engaged in setting up electric bells. I recognized one of the children as a boy from our neighborhood, and wondered if I could get him to fix our bell, since we had had a sign," Please knock; bell don't ring," on the door for two days, while waiting for the repair-man.

A group of younger children had a sheepskin from which they were taking the wool. They spread the wool out thin with their hands and let the dirt fall out, then pulled the fibers straight and wound them on a stick which they called their "distaff." One little girl who had her distaff full was spinning the wool into yarn with the help of a spindle she said she "made in the shop." Around the room were primitive looms being "warped" by the children, and I was shown designs of their own which were to be woven into small blankets. In another room I found one of the large old-fashioned looms of which I had heard, but had never seen before. Two of the older boys were at work "setting it up," as they called it.

Everywhere the children were busy, but the morning was half gone and I had heard nothing that reminded me of a school except a class talking Latin as I passed. I had heard a class discussing whether John Smith or George Washington were the greater man, and another group, with a relief map, trying to decide where it would be best to erect forts to protect the English colonies from the French aggressions from the north and west. But I always know at home when the children get on those subjects that they are not studying their lessons. I wondered why the teacher did not tell them, if she thought it worth while, and then have them bound states and name the capitals and principal cities. In all the classes the children talked, -sometimes two at once; but with a freedom of expression and an ability to stick to the point which surprised me.

I met one of the teachers in the hall and besought her to tell me about the school: whether they had days, or hours, when they really used books; whether Dr. Dewey believed children ought to learn how to read, write, and cipher, or whether the new education was a preparation for Tolstoy's socialism. She said that Dr. Dewey believed the time spent in an elementary school on reading, writing, and arithmetic could be more profitably spent ; that an average child could learn these in doing other things.

She directed me to a class in primitive life, where the children had spent some weeks in working out, with the aid of the teacher, what the earliest people must have done when they had no clothing, or food, or shelter, or means of defense. She told me how they had thought of a spear by fastening a stick between the split ends of a club; how they had made bowls out of clay, and discussed caves as the first homes, and skins as the first clothing; how they had molded in clay their ideas of man and animals in those days, and had become so interested that they had begged to write a report of their work for the school paper. This report had been dictated to the teacher, as none of the class could write. It was then typewritten and all read what the whole group had agreed should be their record of work.

As I passed the room where the little girl with the alligator was, I observed the whole class absorbed in reading a similar report of their work, while the alligator in its box was unnoticed. When a child did not know a word, he was quite as likely to ask one of the other children to help him as to appeal to the teacher.

I had seen "gymnasium" on the program and concluded I would visit that and perhaps find the physical training my little folks needed. But I did not get so far, for as I passed through the dining-room the boy I had seen with the sandwiches and the girl with the fruit were setting the table. Each had a high white apron on and said they were the "waiters," and that this was their day for the group luncheon"; that the rest of the group were cooking in the kitchen.

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I found my way to the kitchen, which I had previously mistaken for the laboratory, with its rows of gas-fixtures and asbestos mats. I learned that earlier in the morning the group had had a cooking lesson in which they experimented with the food given them. Each child had cooked one third of a cup of flaked wheat in two thirds of a cup of water. Each had calculated how much water he would need if he cooked half a cup, and then one child was told to find out how much he would need for the whole group and to cook it, while other tasks were assigned to the rest. Some were cooking a food which they had missed by absence, or which they had failed to cook properly. One child was making cocoa for all; another was making out a tabular statement showing the proportion of water needed for each of the various preparations of wheat, oats, and corn they had studied.

I thought how Fred worried over his fractions, and here were children two years younger working out the number of cupfuls of water and cereal that would be needed for a family of three, five, or eight, on the basis of the number for which one third of a cupful would be sufficient.

The teacher told me that after they had used various weights and measures until they were familiar with them, they arranged them in tables for convenient reference; that after they had added by threes, fives, sevens, etc., they arranged these in the multiplication tables.

As I went back thru the dining-room to the reception-room where one of the teachers had promised to answer some of my questions, the children sat down to the luncheon they had prepared. The sandwiches and fruit appeared, and the small boy who had begged an invitation was there, as a guest. A teacher had also been invited, and served the cereal brought her by the waiters.

From time to time during the morning, a line from Dr. Dewey's book had come into my mind: "Education is a process of living; not a preparation for future living."

The teacher who had consented to enlighten me said that Dr. Dewey had no thought of training cooks or factory hands, but that he believed there was an educational value in handling the raw materials from which our food, clothing, and comforts are derived, and a mental training in reinventing each stage of the process of these industries. Then she told me how one group of children had begun by twisting the wool in their hands to spin it into thread, as the earliest primitive people must have done; how the stick on which they had wound the hand-twisted wool dropped to the ground, twirling about and twisting the end of the thread held in the hand; and how this idea had been developed into the top-shaped spindle I had seen. They had then invented hand-cards for getting the fibers straight, then the idea of the spinning-wheel and the reel. They had also worked out the loom from the simple form of two sticks between which the warp was stretched to the more complex machinery. This had been done by the teacher putting in the simplest way exactly the difficulty to be overcome; and then the children worked out the way to overcome it.

The teacher further pointed out to me that in cooking their luncheons they not only learned to use fractions and weights and measures, as I had seen, but incidentally learned a great deal about chemistry. They estimated in percentage the amount of water and starch in a potato; they tried the effect of the juice of the tomato and of vinegar on milk, and decided that the curdling was due to an acid, and then found that soda would neutralize the acid and that it could be used to prevent curdling in their tomato bisque soup. "But all this has been found out by past generations," I said. "Why not give the children the results? why require them to repeat the process? "Because the process is the valuable part. All universities now have laboratories in order that the students may perform their own experiments, rather than watch the professor do them; we merely carry out the same idea in the elementary period. The children have to read and write and manipulate figures and construct in order to do other things in which they are interested; and because what they desire to accomplish appeals to them as of real value, they are willing to do the less interesting work connected with it. Or

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take any one of our textile industries: the child has always thought of cloth as a thing by itself, with no history back of it beyond the store from which it was purchased. Under the guidance of the teacher he sees it reduced to its first elements, then reconstructed by himself, and cloth has become a new thing to him, bringing to his mind the lives of many peoples and many occupations. Moreover, he has learned a method of investigation which he can apply to any subject."

I was convinced, and entered my children; but asked, just as a matter of curiosity, "Isn't it very expensive to have a teacher for so few children?" "Yes, but the university and some friends of the school who are interested in seeing the experiment carried thru until the children enter college are helping us. Of course we hope some day to have an endowment," she said with a smile.

Art in the Schoolroom.

BY MRS. HOWARD L. LUNT.

"The greatest works of Art ought to become the most familiar ones to the people. Care should be taken, therefore, in the school, to select these great works, and to lead the pupil into an understanding of the motives of their composition, and next to point of the artistic means and devices for the expression of the thought or idea portrayed. . . .

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"If photographs of architecture, sculpture, and painting are made to adorn the walls of the schoolroom, they will produce a permanent effect on the pupil's mind, in the way of refining his taste, even if no studies are made of the motives that the artist has brought into their composition. . . .

"It is by this study of the motives of the artist, and his use of them in creating what is called the organic unity of his work of art, that the pupil can be made to see that art is as serious as history, and even more truthful, as containing a logical consistency in the return of the deed upon the doer."- WILLIAM T. HARRIS, United States Commissioner of Education.

"Art is the flowering of man's moral nature."

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"Picture-study should be taken seriously. The effort is, not for amusement, entertainment, or decoration alone: it has an aim and a purpose larger, broader, and more dignified than any of these.

"We should be doing only half our duty by the boys and girls if we withheld from them this art life, which is, in very truth, their legitimate inheritance. Those who admit that gems of literature belong by right to the public school scholar will have difficulty in arguing that pictures, the world's gems of art, shall not also find their place in the school room."-JAMES FREDERICK HOPKINS, Director of Drawing, Boston.

The following firms handle reproductions for wall-decoration:-
Brown, Clement & Co., 257 Fifth Avenue, New York. (For carbons.)
The Whiddit Photo Co., 46 Fourth Avenue, New York.

(Solar bromides.)

Curtis and Cameron, Copley Square, Boston. (Copley Prints.)

A. W. Elson & Co., 146 Oliver Street, Boston.

(Makers of Our Nation.)

The Prang Educational Company, Boston. (Five-cent pictures.)

The Perry Picture Company, Malden, Mass. (One to five cent pictures.)
George C. Elliott, 421 South Spring Street, Los Angeles, California.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Picture-Study in Elementary Schools. Wilson-McMillan Company, New York.
How to Enjoy Pictures. Emery. The Prang Educational Company, Boston.
Art for the Eye. Turner. The Prang Educational Company, Boston.

Riverside Art Series. Hurll. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., Boston.

The Madonna in Art. Hurll. L. C. Page & Co., Boston.

Why Miss Goggin is Single.

Miss Catherine Goggin's nine reasons for not having a man on her hands are as follows:

Because he might not be an orphan.

"Because he might like tidies.

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Because he might be fond of using pet' names.

Because he might part his hair in the middle of his head.

Because he might demand an itemized account of household expenditures. "Because dinner would have to be taken with the same person each day.

"Because marriage would necessitate daily letter-writing when either he or she might be away.

"Because all the good men seem to be married already.

"Because he has not proposed.'

Miss Goggin is president of the Chicago Teachers' Federation, and has been a grade teacher in Chicago for twenty years.

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