CONTENTS Efforts in Behalf of Preschool Children Directed Largely to Parents. Margaretta Willis Reeve The Rural School With and Without County Library Service. May Dexter Henshall Page 61 72 75 76 80 Page 3 of Cover Social Environment is the Laboratory for Home Economics Study. Minna C. Denton. Is the Junior High School Realizing its Declared Objectives? J. Orin Powers. Cultivation of Virtue the True Aim of Education. John Locke . SCHOOL CHOOL LIFE is intended to be useful to all persons whose interest is in education. It is not devoted to any specialty. Its ambition is to present well-considered articles in every field of education which will be not only indispensable to those who work in that field but helpful to all others as well. Articles of high character on secondary education have been printed under the auspices of the National Committee on Research in Secondary Education, of which Dr. J. B. Edmonson is chariman and Carl A. Jessen is secretary; these articles will continue through this volume at least. Miss Emeline S. Whitcomb, specialist in home economics of the Bureau of Education, has been instrumental in procuring many excellent papers by leading specialists in her subject. Through the courteous cooperation of Mrs. Laura Underhill Kohn and Mrs. S. M. N. Marrs, the achievements of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers are to be set forth in an important series which began in a previous number and are represented in this issue by the contribution of Mrs. Reeve. Similarly, the activity of Miss Edith A. Lathrop, assistant specialist in rural education, and Mr. Carl H. Milam, secretary of the American Library Association, has produced a significant series of papers upon county libraries. Some of them have already been published, as the editorial on page 70 describes. Others are expected from: Sarah B. Askew, librarian, New Jersey Public Library Commission; Bertine Weston, Public Library of Fort Wayne and Allen County, Ind.; Lillian W. Barkdoll, school and reference librarian, Washington County Free Library, Hagerstown, Md.; Margaret E. Wright, in charge of county department, Cleveland Public Library; Charlotte Templeton, librarian, Greenville Public Library, Greenville, S. C. These papers and others upon this subject will be in future numbers. The papers in these four unified series will not overshadow others of equal value. Consular reports on education in other countries constantly come to us through the State Department; frequent articles are printed on child health and school hygiene; higher education is represented in reasonable measure. In short, SCHOOL LIFE means to cover the whole field of education as well as its limited extent will permit. SCH CHOOL LIFE is an official organ of the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education. It is published monthly except in July and August. The subscription price, 50 cents a year, should be sent to the Superintendent of Documents, Government Printing Office, Washington, D. C., and not to the Bureau of Education. Single copies are sold at 5 cents each. For postage to countries which do not recognize the mailing frank of the United States, add 25 cents a year. New Club Rate. Subscription to SCHOOL LIFE, for 50 copies or more sent in bulk to one address, will hereafter be 35 cents a year each. Published Monthly, except July and August, by the Department of the Interior, Bureau of Education VOL. XIV WASHINGTON, D. C., DECEMBER, 1928 No. 4 Efforts in Behalf of Preschool Children Directed Largely To Parents Founder of National Congress of Parents and Teachers Sought to Arouse Parents to Importance of Right Training for Young Children. Present Movement a Reversion to Fundamental Undertakings. Parent-Teacher Organization no Longer a Mere Auxiliary to the Schools but a Great School for Adult Education. Excellent Results from "Summer Round-Up" for Removing Remediable Defects before Beginning School I By MARGARETTA WILLIS REEVE Fourth Vice President, National Congress of Parents and Teachers N SCHOOL LIFE for November the general outline of parental education as it falls within the program of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers has been given. This month we go back to the beginning and consider that program in detail as it relates to the preschool child. Although the wide extension of the parent-teacher movement throughout the school system has tended to center the attention of a majority of its members around the child of school age, the problems met in the surveys made by wellorganized associations have forced thinking parents to turn to the preschool years for their solution and to consider what may be done in them to prevent the occurrence of the difficulties which now confront them through the grade and high school years, when the qualities developed in the home must meet the searching test of public opinion as represented by the schoolroom and the playground. First Emphasis Upon Preschool Education As the purpose of the founder of the National Congress, Mrs. Theodore Birney, was to arouse parents to a consciousness of the importance of the right training of the little human plant, her first emphasis was laid upon preschool education in the home and the fitting of fathers and mothers to meet their responsibilities; but her clear vision saw that the day would come when the teachers must share as partners in the cultivation of the whole child. Preschool education, then, begins with the parents. Dr. Douglas A. Thom has wisely said: "The child is a symptom of 23319-28-1 his environment," and never was defini- Under the name of parental edu- no attention is paid to the education of the parents themselves. They may set such patterns of honesty, truthfulness, and good social relationships that the problems will be solved at the source and will not be reproduced by the children, who are observing and copying all that passes before their keen young eyes. The first requirement, then, for preschool education is parental efficiency. The preschool child is educated in the home. In the six years before school age his physical equipment, his mental attitudes, and his social adjustments are so firmly set that all the later years can only |