vision, his own hearing, and his own methods of thought with those of others.

As conditions are now, the ignorance of the average man concerning the common things around him is amazing. He does not know the songs or the habits of the birds, the names of the grasses and the flowers, or the conditions under which they grow; he does not understand the simple phenomena of nature or the action of natural forces that are taking place around him every day; he does not know how the clothes he wears are made, or how the raw materials from which they are made are prepared. In many cases he does not know how his food is prepared, or what forms are most nourishing and produce the best results in mental and physical vigor. He does not know the common diseases to which plants and animals are liable and he is helpless when it comes to treating them; he does not know the materials out of which the furniture of his home is made, which is best and cheapest; he does not understand how goods are brought to him from other lands, or the laws that have been made to facilitate their transportation. This appalling ignorance of the common things around them on the part of men and women is due to their having been taught to see with others' eyes, to hear with others' ears, and to think with others' minds. They have been taught that education begins and ends with books and they have not learned to observe for themselves. Socrates has been said to have been one of the wisest men who ever lived; yet he seldom went beyond the walls of Athens; but he saw, he heard, and he understood the things with which he came in contact. If we could but teach our pupils to use their senses, we should have but little trouble in bringing about their complete development; but we can never do this so long as we

surround them with the artificial atmosphere of books. Without the habit of attention, the pupil not only fails to accomplish anything in his school work, but, when he comes out into the world of practical affairs, he will be completely at the mercy of his environment. He will be a prey to every idle fancy that may chance to come to him, and to every external influence which may invade his environment. He fails to acquire the habit of concentration, of directing his powers to one thing, and his interest through life will be continually flitting from one thing to another. Unless one has such a mastery of himself that he can exclude, for the moment, from his vision all but the one thing upon which his heart is fixed, he cannot hope for a very great measure of success in what he undertakes.

EFFORT

Another demoralizing effect of the artificiality of our school life is that it does not develop in the pupils the ability to put forth effort, and this is one of the first conditions of achievement. Intellectual laziness is a malady common to almost all men and women because they have not been trained to put forth effort. Having been confined to artificial tasks in which they have no interest, they have become incapable of doing hard work. It is an alarming condition that the great majority of men and women fail to make a success of their business. They may eke out a mere living, but the great majority of them do not succeed in the highest sense of the term. It is said that fully 90 per cent of men and women do not do what they started out to do, and one of the chief causes of these failures is that they are unwilling to do the hard work necessary to their success. The difference in men is largely a difference in their willingness to put

forth effort. We ought to remember in our school work that we are training for the stern, practical world where there will be difficult problems to solve and where the man who has not learned to pull on a dead level, as it were, will have the odds terribly against him. It is by overcoming that we learn to overcome. It is by overcoming the hard tasks in the schoolroom that we learn to overcome the hard problems on the outside; and if we have such conditions in the schools as to require us to solve no hard problems, we shall be helpless in the face of the hard knocks of the world.

If the child's work in school is arranged in harmony with his natural instincts, he will acquire the habit of putting forth effort. It is as natural for the child to put forth effort as it is for the normal man and woman, but if the teacher does not mold instinct of the child into habit by making the conditions of his work conducive to effort, the child will never acquire the habit, and he will have to be driven to his tasks in school and he will have to be driven to them in the same way when he leaves school. It is only the few whose lives are not dwarfed by the artificiality of school conditions that retain and develop the instincts of childhood.

JUDGMENT

Another result of the normal growth and development of children is that they acquire the ability to judge the relative worth of things. It will do no good to talk about training the judgment unless we have conditions conducive to such training. The pupil can develop his judgment only by exercising it, and it is the business of the teacher to place about him such conditions that he will exercise it aright. His conclusions may be wrong, but wrong conclusions are better than no conclusions at

all. The child's information ought to be accurate; but we are entirely too willing to sacrifice thought-power to accuracy of information. If we see the pupil about to arrive at a wrong conclusion, we grow impatient, take the work out of his hands, and lead him to the conclusion we think is the correct one, as though the ultimate result were the thing of prime importance. A little more patience, a little better understanding of our tasks, would cause us to allow the child to work out his own conclusions. If he goes wrong a time or two, or even a dozen times, it is better for him to do his own thinking than to have some one else do it for him.

When the pupil comes out into the world, he is constantly required to estimate values, to decide between this fact and that. When he goes into a store to buy a piece of goods, he cannot afford to accept the salesman's judgment implicitly, it matters not how honest a salesman he may be. He must think in every transaction he makes, or he soon becomes an "easy mark" for all who would use him for their benefit. In religion, there are some vital questions which others cannot settle for him, and upon which, perhaps, hangs his eternal destiny. In politics, he does not want to be a mere camp follower, passively accepting the demagog's directions with no opinion of his own. In his social affairs, he wants to stand for something, and not be a mere tool in the hands of others. In fact, there is no sphere of life in which individual thinking is not required of the man who would be efficient.

However, according to our present methods, the teacher and the textbook are the final arbiters of things, and the pupil is given but little opportunity to think for himself. If he is not crushed by the system and made a weakling, it is because of the opportunity afforded him outside of

school for independent thought. In geography, he must acquire the facts laid down in the textbook, and is rushed forward at such a terrific rate that he has no time to think. In arithmetic, the work is so arranged as to elicit the least possible thought. Most frequently all the problems on the page can be solved by the same rule, and the work is little more than a mechanical routine. In history, he must accept without question what the textbook says. In English, where there is the greatest possible opportunity for individual thinking, the text editor has written out his notes in detail, and the pupil accepts blindly what he says. In Latin, there is no room for individual thought. The teacher stands over the pupil with her red pencil, ready to reprimand him if he digresses the least bit from the time-beaten paths. Before we accomplish in the school what we ought to, and inspire our pupils with that enthusiasm and self-confidence that is so necessary to successful work, we must change our methods so as to give the pupil a chance to think for himself.

ORGANIZATION OF IDEAS

Along with the development of his judgment, the pupil learns to organize his ideas. Mere information counts for nothing unless it is organized. The arrangement of facts according to their importance and natural sequence is necessary to a clear understanding of the subject under consideration. An isolated fact is worth nothing except as it helps to reinforce some truth or lesson. The fact that George Washington was the first president of the United States, regarded as an isolated fact, is of no consequence; but when the fact is taken in its relation to other facts, it is of extreme importance. If the fact that Columbus discovered America had no more significance than that a man discovered a continent,