YCULPTURE

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FOR SCHOOLS. Lorado Taft, sculptor, whose studio is at 6016 Ellis Avenue, Chicago, has on exhibition there a decidedly significant display of a suitable selection of casts for public schools. What Mrs. Brewster's article in this issue of the EDUCATIONAL REVIEW does for you in helping choose pictures which experience has shown will be looked at by children, Mr. Taft is doing as regards sculpture. "Shall we," asks this missonary of the fuller life, "afford our children acquaintance with the art inheritance of the race?" We can, is his answer. Every school of a dozen classrooms can secure enough copies of great sculptures to make it radiant with beauty. The sample gallery costs $500. It is collected after most careful experimenting with school boys and girls to determine what will attract and hold their attention. In the set are Donatello's "Dancing Children," ($25); his "Bambino," ($12); "The Laughing Child," ($5); two panels of Della Robbia's singers, ($18); Gabii's "Diana" ($60). There are thirteen busts: Hermes, Apollo, The Young Augustus, Clytie, Brutus, Homer, and others. Mercie's "David" and Pigalle's "Mercury" cost $13.50 each. A slab of the Parthenon frieze can be had for $20.00. The casts are those of a Boston firm and are in soft tones resembling old marble. The $500 list is flexible. If there are several schools in your town, each can have a different set.

Mental Hygiene in School.-The Illinois Society for Mental Hygiene is entering upon its fifteenth year. It contines its popular lectures, its round-table discussion of prob

lems by parents, teachers, and others, its organization of local mental-health committees, and conduct of its mind clinics. Civic and patriotic clubs are coming into more active coöperation with the work of the society. For the past four years the association has trained social workers in case practice and has given instruction in parent education. It plans courses in mental hygiene for teachers and for high-school students. It proposes ultimate extension to the elementary schools. In one of the Chicago high-schools the society has taken cases referred to it by the principal: pupils with criminal tendencies, truants, cheaters, laggards, problem cases. Parents are given advice. The society's psychiatrists found low-grade intelligence in 35 per cent of the school cases, poor physical condition in 4 per cent. The remedies for different difficulties proposed were: Leave school, 35 per cent; get into routine work, 15 per cent; stick to your regular work, 15 per cent; get more organized recreation, 12 per cent. Other prescriptions were: enter a supervised occupation; give up the studies you are failing in and take more music; attend another school. The headquarters of the society are at 308 N. Michigan Avenue, Chicago. Membership is $5. a year; (teachers and social workers $2). The society needs money. It is in charge of entirely responsible citizens. It is worthy of substantial aid.

Harnessing the School to Town Work.Forty-six years ago, Malcolm McVickar, principal at Ypsilanti, Michigan, selected a long stretch of unshaded streets and, for a "pro

ject," before Mr. Kilpatrick had taught us the word, put his students to work planting maples in straight rows between the sidewalk and the road. The boys brought the saplings from the woods, dug the holes, carried the water and planted the trees. The girls served sandwiches, doughnuts, coffee, and pie. As far as I can now recall I am prouder of my work on that day than for any prize I won in school. Why? Because the innate quality of youth is generosity, and to exercise it is to act according to nature. I wish now my teachers had provided numerous occasions to encourage and direct service for the town and state which were paying good money for my schooling. For several years the Chicago Association of Commerce has directed the organization of children in their schools for doing something for the city which pays their educational expenses. In 1923 there were 363,672 children doing actual work in the city "clean up" in the spring. That is when the charitable snow-covering of the multitude of housekeeping sins melts away. In 1924, the number of public-school participants were 619,279; in 1925 it was 3,242,462; that is, so many children felt the patriotic urge that they performed 548 per cent more than their quota. This remarkable result was achieved by principals who added "civic service" to their regular school exercises on the ground that the schools were established and are maintained predominatingly for this purpose. Saluting the flag and singing the "Star Spangled Banner" is not teaching patriotism. The urge must function, as the honorable, the psychiatric psychologists tell us, or it is naught. As this magazine goes to press the Chicago reports for 1926 have not been tabulated. But the number of principals who are making actual civic service, clean ups, paint ups, making toys for hospitals and orphanages, serving in safety patrols, etc., an essential part of a child's yearly program is almost the entire managerial staff of the schools. The EDUCATIONAL RE

VIEW has frequently referred to the systematized work of Superintendent Prior of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, with his lists of services and his civic diploma. Consider the example of Stillman Valley, Illinois. It was as down at the heel as are parts of your home town; rubbish on vacant lots, billboards askew. Stillman Valley had no park commission, no money. But it had rakes, shovels, wagons, and pride. Thirty truck-loads of rubbish were removed by men, women and school children; fences were painted; shrubs and flowers were planted. Then the Harmon Foundation of New York, which radiates commendations all over America to those who beautify their surroundings, tossed a nice little $500 reward into Stillman Valley's lap.

Brother, you and your educational staff are paid your modest wages not by mere parents but by the whole community. Everyone who spends a cent within your town precincts contributes a part of every spending to your pay. We all think you don't get as much as you should. We know, also, that many of you don't direct your service straight enough into community benefit. You have a dim idea that school is for the children, and that you are for the school. That idea was pretty much supplanted when the cost of schools in 1835 was transferred from only parents and put upon everybody, childless and all. General welfare, not personal advantage, is the obligation founded upon your school-tax system. The sooner you put into practice definite and measurable community service by your young citizens the sooner you will make your service receive the remuneration it ought to have. "What have you done for Fairhaven?" Prior asks his children every week. Why not? Fairhaven is doing for them everyday. Children should not wait for some deferred dividend to come, maybe after some graduate earns more than he can spend. We learn to do, not by listening to stories of Carnegies. Service as a habit is the need, now, not to be put off.