social occupations such as housekeeping should be a natural step. The amount done is of course sadly lessened, as in everything else, by the necessary repetition of the same work in a class of from twenty-five to thirty-five, while the rest are occupied with so-called seat-work, so that without most skilful planning much time is wasted. But the gain to all the school work in motive and meaning will more than compensate for this loss.

The question next arises: How shall these occupations be applied in primary work? The answers are as various in detail as the situations to be met, and in the end depend, as everything else in the curriculum does, upon individual initiative.

In the absence of any definite limit to the term "primary grades" I have taken the first four grades, covering the ages from about six to ten or eleven years. As requested, I shall limit my illustrations to occupations concerned directly with the preparation of food. The processes here concerned are easily simplified for school use, and in the present empirical state of knowledge hardly afford much opportunity for use in the later stages of education. That a selection can be made from household occupations which will furnish social and organized material for school work in primary grades, I hope to show, and shall lay more stress on the social value of this work because Mr. Richards, in his preceding article, has shown the general educational relation of organized activities to mental growth.

In all formulations of the value of nature study for primary children one finds repeated the necessity of confining the "lessons" to simple facts and relations along with the aims "to cultivate the powers of clear thinking and careful observation, in order to grasp the simple relations involved." Can the ideal of "cultivating a scientific love of truth" be conceived as appealing to a small child? As a matter of fact, as Dr. John Coulter has observed, "I should be thankful if a child's natural powers of observation were let alone to develop, as they do when not inhibited." Anyone having an ordinary acquaintance with young children knows that they see much more than the ordinary, preoccupied, adult. The things a child sees are, of course, the things that are doing, and those natural objects which suggest use or action to him. His curiosity is naturally excited by unknown materials, hence he sees what escapes others as familiar. The relations he grasps are not the intellectual abstractions of the scheming teacher, but the use primarily to himself or someone else, or later to the plant or animal itself.

To satisfy this interest, and gradually to bring the child through the natural training involved in the first fruit of his observations into social occupations, will not only preserve the original ability to see, but direct it into lines profitable to the socially developing self.

While no one would fail to recognize the value of such nature study as increases the child's understanding of, and sympathy with, animate and inanimate nature through excursions and care of animals and plants in the school, yet there seems to be danger of this kind of nature study becoming a mere addition to the other subjects of the primary curriculum as long as the motives appealed to are adult in character. As long as the ideals are far removed from action, as are those generally formulated, the tendency to insist on accurate observation of relations and parts having no real meaning to the child will persist.

With the appreciation, however, of the facts of the child's progressive growth, of the dangers of a divorce between intellect and conduct, and of the great part which social life there plays in the individual's development, must come an application of these aims to the choice of more social occupational work for children.

way to

The most obvious place in the present school curriculum, nevertheless, for the use of household occupations as an entering wedge for general social occupations is to be found under nature study, where scattered and perfunctory "plant lessons" can find a natural center in the school garden. Where schoolyard gardens are an impossibility, schoolroom boxes are not. Where a complete kitchen equipment is an impossibility, there are effective substitutes which will pave the the social end-the class luncheon. The importance of making the cooking, or whatever process is carried out by the children, serve some end desirable to the child is not often appreciated. Most persons overlook the need for a sufficient motive which appeals to social interest and involves co-operation as well as a recognition of individuals by the social whole. The simplest process which makes something that can be enjoyed by all is complete only when, by keeping the number small at a table (ten, or better, eight children), the children themselves can carry out completely the serving of a social meal. Implying, as this does, the cultivation of social amenities and exercise of hospitality, the school then uses one of the strongest of childish motives. The substitutes for the ordinary kitchen equipment are many and various. The two most essential ways of cooking-boiling and baking-can be carried on with two gas or kerosene stoves, using large tin pans as the

water reservoirs and small tin cans as the children's individual boilers. Mr. Edward Atkinson has an article in the New England Kitchen Magazine, entitled "Every Boy His Own Cook," which gives directions for the construction of an oven practicable for any schoolroom. Boards and saw horses make practical cooking and dining tables to be placed in the temporary kitchen, screened from the rest of the school

room.

Where it seems impossible to use even the most primitive cooking apparatus, such processes as the making of butter, flour, and maple. sugar, when performed with the social setting of the occupation typified, may well take the place of the simple cooking processes. As an illustration of one of these processes arranged to present only one or two unknown conditions for the children to meet, the butter-making carried out by twelve little second-grade children who a week previous did not know whence butter came, might be given. The planning of the churning occupied about half an hour a day for a week. About an hour more was needed for the making of the wrappers and dashers. The children gathered together the materials necessary, i. e., they planned what would be needed-churns, baking-powder cans, dashers, wooden sticks, paddles for working the butter, salt, and cheese-cloth and paraffin paper wrappers. In each case, as soon as the children formulated a need and suggested something to meet it, the material best fitted to the need was given them. Under other circumstances more could safely be left to the children. The cream, at the right temperature, was given to the class, and the process was completed in one period of between forty-five and sixty minutes in length.

All conditions of children find a wide field in the use of household occupations, such processes being suggested by the experiences of every home. The particular adaptation made would, of course, depend upon the locality and the experience of the children. In city schools it would be worth while to carry on the simplest processes of food preparation as well as cooking. For example, to dig a real hill of potatoes, to sort, to measure, and save some for seed, and finally to cook others, would certainly be a new and valuable experience for city children. With country children the valuable points would differ widely. The manner of growth of the potato as compared with other underground stems, the action of heat on the cellulose and starch of the potato, the relation of potato starch to other forms of starch, the value to the plant of such storehouses of food, the care necessary in storing and selecting seed, could all be brought out, whereas such

points treated experimentally could be used to advantage only with much older city children.

Those occupations most closely concerned with the everyday home and neighborhood life, which can be so simplified that the child can carry out the processes involved in a short time and with the greatest independence, would naturally be chosen first. The choice for the first two grades would also fall upon such processes as repeated and completed in short intervals of time.

are often

When a child carries out processes which he has seen almost daily, he is free to initiate changes in the methods which will enable him to attain his end. The more familiar household activities would, with this basis of choice, naturally precede such occupations as textiles, pottery, metal-working, etc. However, household activities, especially the preparation of food, can be so treated as to hold the attention and afford educational opportunities in the transition stage of the child's development which begins about the time the third grade is reached. This second or transition stage of the elementary period is marked by the beginning of definite consciousness of processes as distinct from ends, and hence ends more remote can be used. The waste in the past use made of cooking, kitchen-gardening, and laundry in the schools has been that the simpler, more active parts of such work has been delayed until the child gets nothing valuable to him in such simple operations, because activity in itself no longer appeals to him. The beginning of this stage is the moment to meet the child's new intellectual demands through experimental work, by means of which he can feel that he himself is inventing and applying processes to new materials. Such work should lead to (at least at the close of this period, somewhere between ten and twelve years of age) a concrete classification of foods used from various points of view, such as sources, methods of preparation, etc. The new element of arrangement, through a review of his past experience with the satisfaction of a wider view, will furnish the new intellectual element. He will then be ready to apply the methods of the past to new materials whose nature he can determine for himself.

The general educational values, then, of social occupations may be stated as follows: continuity of school and life; their social value as affording opportunity for easy combination of individual and co-operative responsibility with the gratification of strong social instincts; continuity of interest; and use of such simple processes that the child can gradually gain control of ends more and more remote.

HELEN M. MAXWELL,

Principal Corcoran School, Minneapolis, Minn.

FOR many years "construction work" has been written in our course of study. All of us have believed in the necessity of handtraining and its relation to the mental development of children. Living up to their best light, our primary grades have been trying to solve this problem, and have attempted many constructive exercises that proved themselves almost useless and without the first element of beauty. Paper chairs that will not rock and paper wheels that will not turn are a rather discouraging and unsatisfactory product.

Last summer a party of Minneapolis principals and teachers spent a few weeks at the Chicago Institute and at the Summer School at Chautauqua, refreshing their minds with study and seeking sources of

This paper was prepared for the joint session of the Manual Training and Art Education Departments of the National Educational Association at Detroit, July 10, 1901. In the absence of the author, the paper was read by Miss Bonnie E. Snow, supervisor of drawing, Minneapolis, who illustrated it with an exhibit of pupils' work. 26 [OCTOBER