sue. needs fuel elaborated in the form of carbohydrates; it needs a method whereby the fuel may reach its place of need; it needs oxygen for burning; it needs a method of handling waste tisThus arose the circulatory, the respiratory, and the excretory systems. Ascending from the low plane of animal life to the high, the worm-like animal, the fish, the arboreal animal, gave successively to man the old fundamental muscles of the trunk, the shoulder, and the thigh, the new accessory muscles of the arm, the leg, and the fingers. The pull of the trunk muscles developed the spinal cord of the nervous system. Exercise of the appendages developed the cerebellum; the cortex and association areas arose from the activity of the appendages and the special senses. The fundamental muscles are those of the trunk, the shoulder, and the thigh; the fundamental parts of the nervous system are the spinal cord, the medulla, the mid brain, and the cerebellum. All of these are old and their growth is a matter of the caterpillar stage. One would question the desirability of building a house on sand, yet in our steamroller way we try to build a perfect man on an undeveloped boy. The caterpillar stage of a boy is spread over some twelve years of his life, and should be a stage devoted to growth and to development of the fundamental muscles and the fundamental parts of the nervous system, for he repeats in his development the history of his race. Just as the individual has a racial body so has he a racial mind. He recapitulates the civic and moral history of his people. Successively he is savage barbarian, semi-civilized, and civilized. At each period of his recapitulation, the racial urging of that period expresses itself. We must not try to eliminate these periods of growth. We must not try to make the boy omit his period of savagery any more than to try to eliminate or shorten the caterpillar stage of the moth. We must not interfere with nature as she fashions a man out of a boy. Rather let us make his environment such as will direct naturally his growth and his racial impulses. We are told that, due to the interference of parents and the school, children at twelve years of age are 10 per cent below normal vital capacity. The parents tell John to sit still, the school makes him sit still. He sits still, and from the adult point of view a good boy is made, but really a good man has been spoiled. If the school cannot make him sit still, if the demands for growth are too strong, the boy is a misfit and leaves school temporarily or permanently. Again John may be made to sit still, yet saves himself from crystallization through his dullness. Fulton, Newton, Seward, Sir Walter Scott, John Hunter, Pasteur, Shelly, Herbert Spencer, Patrick Henry, Pierre Curie, Thackeray, Oliver Goldsmith, James Russell Lowell, and many others were average pupils, and many were considered dull. They were fundamentally too strong to be standardized by the school. The school may help nature in growing men and women through the garden. Through it the children may be led to those factors which make for natural physical and mental growth. Racial impulses both physical and mental are satisfied by environmental factors. Examination of one's environment, or community, reveals four factors which make for its life the market, the bank, the press, the factory. Each of the four factors alluded to may be traced back to the soil, to agriculture. Agriculture, the soil, is the fundamental stuff out of which communities are built. Migrationroving from place to place, primitive agriculture, marketing and trading, banking, manufacturing are successive steps in civic evolution. Through the garden, the school may repeat this civic history and the children may be brought in contact with community factors. School gardens had been under way in the Ohio State Normal School several years before the above thought was demonstrated by the writer. A market was established. Many of the gardeners made from 5 to 75 cents off of plots 4x6 feet. Naturally, to handle the new financial activities a bank was established. This institution took charge of the gardens and leased the individual plots to the children for 10% of the output. The seventh grade bookkeeping class was put in charge of the bank, thus vitalizing the bookkeeping work. The bank handled over $50 a month, and the children were brought in contact with all its activities. Continually we felt the need of a printing outfit. A complete office was installed with business manager, operators, etc. Boys out of joint with the school system were remade in the printing office. A weekly newspaper and a magazine issued twice a term offered new and vital outlet to the art and English departments. The printing office furnished stationery for the bank. Through actual harvesting of the economic plants, sugar beets, flax, hemp, etc., the garden pointed the way to the work of the world and brought the children to the factor of manufacturing. The motivating thought behind the market, the bank, the press, the factory, was to bring the children in contact with the social and business activities centered upon each in the community that the pupils might early become acquainted with their future working field. With the gardens and agriculture as a center, a miniature world, containing the factors which are vital to community life, was readily produced. A school has two fundamental functions: (1) to produce a well rounded man with a moral aim as the motivating factor; (2) to make him fit his future working field. The latter function is the greater of the two, for if a man "fits" he is a whole man. If these aims constitute the kingdom of the school, shall we be amiss in examining the "future working field” for the factors which make for its being? With these in hand shall they not become a part of the curriculum of the school that they may offer their essence to the children during their school life? If we desire to teach a man to swim at twenty we must make him acquainted with the water before nineteen. If the school desires to make a boy fit the place of his future labors socially and otherwise at sixteen it must acquaint the boy with the factors which constitute this field, previously. Analysis of community life reveals two main factors: (1) a factor for pleasure and repose; (2) a factor for the more serious affairs of life, namely, those of business. Its life of pleasure contains the elements which are in tune with warped or unwarped senses. The difference between true and false pleasure depends upon the conditions of the senses, whether attuned to artistic dishes, at artistic hours, whether loyal to old Nick or attuned to the sky-city at night with its countless shining lights. One is satisfying, the other leads to discontent. One is true pleasure, the other is mere sensation. One is in harmony with the driving force within forcing the destiny of the world to better things, the other is antagonistic. The business life of the community contains four leading factors: (1) the printing office; (2) the bank; (3) the trades; (4) the factories. One fails to find these factors in the life of the school, yet these are the very essence of the working field of the pupils. Essentially a school should have within it those things which are vital to community life. The school should be a miniature world giving the child contact with world forces, that he may develop in them, with some freedom of choice, and not as some biased individual directs. To me the school is leading the children into the "blind alleys" rather than out into the wide avenues. It is trying to lead national and community life rather than to follow it. Sweep the school aside and the world would progress, but with some friction. The school arose to allay friction. It first was the family. The natural environment was the school room; those things immediately in touch with the child and the family were the materials; the parents were the teachers, and what would best work out the happiness of the family and the race with the least amount of friction determined the methods. The child was taught to help build a home; to make and to use tools; to hunt and to prepare his food; thus to relieve in as many ways as possible the friction in his daily life. Conditions soon became more complex, and new vehicles, reading, writing and arithmetic, were called to carry the new complexities. We question any legitimate call for much of the geography, history and arithmetic, etc., which has come to be a part of the twentieth century school. We doubt that the community ever needed cube root, the least common multiple, the greatest common factor, etc., etc. If the community life ever called for such stuff, times have changed and these subjects no longer fulfill any important function. The school is demonstrating its ability to lead. The universities and agricultural colleges have done and are doing much for the betterment of agricultural conditions. They are coming to recognize the potentiality in the children and are now forming and following plans to better not only our national growth but that of the school through agriculture— agriculture in its broadest sense. In 1910, the University of California set aside a sum of money to take agriculture to the schools. Our plan has been and is to make school life a copy of the community life, to link the school and the community through the agency of the school garden, thus to satisfy the growth of the racial body and mind of the children. Less than five months ago the Division of Agricultural Education of the University of California offered to the Whittier school of Berkeley land, water, tools, and seeds in return for the boys and girls of the fifth and sixth grades. The children came to the campus gardens but one hour a week. They were divided into groups of eight and placed in charge of students in the University. The past term we |