tially torn off, term after term. The ugliness of these boards was made more apparent by their isolated positions in the large spaces.

The principal's enthusiasm in the cause of pleasing decoration stimulated members of the art department to new activity. A plan was evolved to enhance the beauty of the auditorium and to make the entrance halls and other wall spaces very attractive. The preliminary project involved little or no expense and was undertaken by the art teachers themselves. As the institution was a high school specializing in commercial education, it was decided to decorate the dozen smaller panels with mural designs; the motives being the coats-of-arms of several great commercial cities of the past and present, including the symbol of the home city. The designs were broadly treated, and painted in attractive colors on canvas, which filled the spaces in pleasing fashion.

Then came the problem of getting murals for the two large spaces. Because of the expense which such an undertaking would involve, it was utterly impossible to ask painters of established reputation to undertake the work. A few young artists were interested in the project and submitted ideas in the form of colored sketches. The themes chosen for representation were "Ancient Commerce" and "Modern Commerce.' The designs of one of these young painters were finally accepted and approved by the Art Commission.

The principal had laid the plan before the teachers, and had been urging economy in expenditures by different school organizations; so that a fund had been gradually accumulated to enable him to finance the undertaking. The enormous size of the canvases necessitated a spacious studo for working purposes. The director of a college permitted the artist to use a large room in his institution as a studio. The Municipal Art Society became interested, and encouraged the project by contributing a handsome sum.

When the paintings were finally fixed in their places they added life to the auditorium by their interesting subject, pleasing appearance, and beautiful glow of color. The latter is harmoniously related to the tint of the walls, and to the tone of the wood in the seats and trimmings. Permanent pigments were used; so that the pictures are as lovely in color to-day as they were when first placed on the walls. Many students see the pictures daily during the lunch periods.

The paintings were formally unveiled; and the interest aroused on this occasion made the acquisition of additional works of art a comparatively easy task. Another mural, "Learning," has since been placed on the wall facing the entrance hall. The graduating students were made to see the importance of school decoration; and for a number of terms, classes have presented one or more framed colored reproductions of paintings selected for their interest and decorative aspect. These have been hung in the students' and teachers' lunch rooms, in the halls, and in the class rooms.

The influence of such pictures in the development of taste may not be apparent; but beauty leaves its mark. The constant contact with works that are pleasing in subject, fine in composition, lovely in line, and harmonious in color surely leaves its impression on adolescent students, which will influence their future taste. The pictures also furnish topics for discussion in the class room.

This experience in beautifying a building is not confined to this single school. In a number of institutions, alert members of the art department, working with principals who are aware of the importance of a pleasing environment, have been successful in filling empty wall spaces with fine works of art. [As this article goes to press, two dignified murals, one of them a war tribute, are being unveiled in the Morris High School and in the Wadleigh High School respectively, both in New York City]

It is difficult to find fault with this statement of purposes. However, some experience as a participant and observer in experiments in progressive education, leads me to question whether the particular organizers and leaders of progressive schools in general have carefully planned the details of their programs. It is true that our experience with progressive education is too limited to yield a definite technique, but it is also true that we have the basic knowledge of social needs, the nature of the child, and the nature of the learning process to suggest that a technique cannot be haphazardly developed; that the program of a progressive school should include a plan for the development of a technique which comprehends these factors. The discovery of such a technique, in my opinion, will demonstrate the inefficiency of talking about freedom, truth, and individuality and the need for the exercise of these traits. The elements of freedom and truth

are much subtler than the average enthusiastic educational reformer realizes. These elements are not developed by indoctrination. The habits of living and thinking are not formed in connection with spoken or written aphorisms, proverbs, customs or precepts. These affect conduct only slightly and then only in the case of highly literate children. In school life, rationalization about specific acts of children is not so useful in influencing future conduct as it is in explaining, clarifying, and directing present conduct. Therefore, a teacher need not consider herself negligent if she succeeds in getting a child to share his apple without a verbal justification. The act automatically helps to form a good habit. The verbal explanation may not be understood at all or it may be misunderstood. It may undo the work of the act. At best it can only strengthen the habit a little.

The fundamentals of truth, love, and justice consist of certain specific ingredients without which these virtues are impossible to attain. These have not been thoroughly studied and only the more obvious ones are recognizable. In infancy we begin to train children not to perceive what they actually perceive. They acquire inaccurate percepts and concepts of persons, places, and things. They begin with a stock of false tools which multiply as their application increases. The most harmful superstitions are formed very early in childhood: that a

black skin is unclean; that a policeman is wicked; that sugar is a harmful food; that dark places are infested by bogy men; that all snakes are poisonous; that all dogs bite and all cats scratch; that parents are perfect; that the stork brings babies; that only red apples are sweet; that clothing is for decoration, etc.

In the school the teacher can render the greatest service toward the development of moral persons by helping the child to form habits of accurate, rapid, attentive observation, manipulation, reading, writing, and study. The child who is permitted to make inaccurate replies, form inaccurate word pictures, form incorrect word meanings, report inaccurate accounts of experiences, give inaccurate accounts of events can never attain a high degree of truth, love, and justice. The child who is equipped with an inadequate vocabulary cannot interpret or reproduce the truth. The child who is deficient in fundamental information builds up a body of fanciful patterns concerning persons, institutions, and places.

The reading of children in the earliest years has something to do with the development of habits of truthful evaluation of things, persons, and places. Continuous practice in accurate recognition, interpretation and reproduction of the ideas read or heard will determine the capacity of the child to be honest to a greater degree than verbal indoctrination. Much of the thinking of the adult depends upon reading in newspapers, magazines, and books. Teachers as well as social philosophers ignore the importance of the rudimentary habits which are essential for a fair interpretation of the reading of adults. There is no certainty that the intelligent social-minded person will be fair, honest, or sympathetic. Lacking the basic facts or lacking practice in accurate analysis, he will accept a shibboleth as gospel, make it a touchstone for all his judgments, his sympathies, his affections. The result is harmful in spite of good intentions.

Intelligent liberal teachers and philosophers spend too much time in arguing for the introduction of controversial problems

and too little time on the analysis of the mechanics necessary for an effective interpretation of these problems. Now and again I come upon an example of sound training for clear, courageous thinking in a conventional school which proceeds quietly and effectively to build up habits of accurate interpretation and presentation of ideas. I am not here arguing for a highly regimented school. I merely wish to point out that sound thinking is dependent upon the development of fine mechanisms of thought and that these mechanisms need to be discovered and developed in children.

Growing out of the prejudice against the highly regimented curriculum of the conventional public school, certain experimental schools have regarded with suspicion any attempt to direct their programs of activities toward the attainment of a set of specific fundamental purposes. They fear that a program of predetermined purposes will repress free activity and furthermore, they fear that these purposes are apt to be particularly suited to adults and not to children. The result is that certain progressive schools permit the child to pursue a random career without any assurance of the attainment of essential purposes.

The announcement of the progressive school states that the school will encourage spontaneity, that it will abandon the customary teaching; that the child will be free from rigid curriculum requirements and at the same time will be able to carry on in the public schools. As a matter of fact, no one has yet completely demonstrated that this can be done. The few outstanding claims of its accomplishment are not universally accepted.

If free education is to make good the claim that it does the work of the formal school more effectively, it must base its program on useful purposes and the laws of learning to a greater degree. I believe it to be possible to so order the activities of childhood as to attain with the child's consent a perfect knowledge of the addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division of the integers. I do not think that a random process will

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guarantee the perfect learning of the use of numbers. Similarly, I think it is possible for the child voluntarily to make the repetitions necessary to spell the most useful words. Similarly, I think it is possible to attain skill in the use of the several important tools by conforming to the laws of learning without completely denying the child the opportunity of free choice and free activity.

There is more room for harmony between specific useful objectives and spontaneity of activity than certain progressive schools at present provide for. The progressive schools have given too much attention to the nature of the child and not enough attention to actual social needs and to the laws of learning. If the many necessary objectives are organized into groups, it is possible to allow the child to choose an activity from each group. For instance, it is important that the child shall develop some skill in manipulating a hammer, but it matters very little whether he does so in connection with pine, poplar, cedar, or basswood. On the other hand, it matters much that he shall learn how to hammer a nail into both soft wood and hard wood because two different indispensable skills are involved.

There is too much fear that the actual affairs of life do not interest the child. The false assumption, I think, arises first, from home conditions which are the uncontrolled result of our modern mechanical civilization which has taken actual handiwork out of the home and, therefore, out of the range of the child. Second, it arises from a false and insupportable theory of play. The child loves to play but not all the live-long day. No twelve year old boy wishes to build a toy house. He wants to build a shack that will actually house his gang, a wagon that will actually carry his little sister, a scooter that will actually carry him down the hill. He wants to build useful articles.

But suppose he does not. That is no reason why he should not be induced to want There is no reason why the boy who can build a scooter shall not use his skill in sharing the household handiwork

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which he is capable of performing. It is obvious that an intelligent parent, brother, or sister will secure the child's willing cooperation in performing household tasks. The school faces a similar situation in the conduct of essential activities.

Third, the prejudice against adherence to a set of fundamental objectives arises from too sharp a demarcation between the child and adult life. There is much evidence that the child is capable of greater achievement than we ordinarily expect of him. Industry has always depended upon, and to a degree still depends upon children for responsible productive labor. There is no reason why the school should not expect as much from the child, remembering not to make the mistakes of industrial employers.

I agree that the selection of activities for the kindergarten and the elementary school should be dominated by child conduct. However, there is no reason why the choice of objectives should not be based upon usefulness. It should not exclude certain practical activities in which the child engages in the home. Nor does it exclude objectives which relate to adult experience. It should be discovered that much which affects the child also affects the adult. For example, the department store which is conducted exclusively by adults touches the life of the city child intimately and offers material for study and observation. Nor is it necessary to exclude certain important objectives ascertained by an analysis of social needs. A selection from such objectives should, however, be made by thoughtful teachers of experience who can judge their appropriateness for children or the possibility of adapting them to the interests and capacities of children.

Miss Jean Hunt's discussion of the Decroly plan in Progressive Education, December, 1924, suggests that balance of free activity and essential purposes which I have in mind. "The subject-matter program under the Decroly plan is at once a highly flexible, dayto-day, made-in-the-class-room affair, and a carefully planned, agreed-to-beforehand affair, with definite objectives to be attained,

which is only another way of saying that when we attempt to orient the child in his own world, we are led perforce to consider with him the fundamental needs, food, shelter, clothing, work, protection, on which the Decroly programs are based, and to make him aware as well of certain relationships equally fundamental. These then constitute the prescribed framework within which the teacher has freedom for individual initiative in shaping the daily experiences."

The "Conduct Curriculum" worked out by Miss Hill and her associates for the kindergarten and first grade based upon an inventory of habits which children should form is an excellent beginning in improving the technique of the progressive school. For each habit to be formed there is a corresponding activity, the habit being the objective and the activity the means for attaining it. This, according to the director of the study, is not a denial of the progressive principles of John Dewey but rather a re

finement of these principles. It is an attempt to eliminate vagueness and to "make habit serve as a means to a more productive creativity." There are about a dozen similar publications which set forth a planful scheme of activities for the progressive school. The most serious limitation of most of these programs of activity is that they offer no assurance of the achievement of the useful purposes.

I have attempted to indicate the need for planning the details of a progressive school program in accordance with the most essential social purposes and in accordance with the laws of the learning process. A careful analysis of the process of learning to be fair, sympathetic, and honest would reveal the specific habits which are probably now being overlooked. A careful analysis of essential social purposes should reveal many which cannot be left to random achievement and which are within the capacity and interests of children.

6. To lay foundations for character through vital contact with Christ.

It is evident that these purposes are one with those carried out by the various denominations in their week-day schools. The opportunity here for both intensive and extensive work, with five full mornings a week at the disposal of the church, is unparalleled.

The daily schedule given below is planned by the Federation for a small school, for at two and one half hour session, and is generally followed with but slight modifications.

8:45 Preliminary service for teachers.
9:00-Doors open and children march in.
Opening service of worship.
Repeating of devotional verses.