utilizing their natural eagerness to learn; to use, instead of suppressing, their natural activity; to make school a part of child life instead of an unkindly premonition of an adult life-perhaps the children would be as glad to return to school as they now are to get out.

"And they might learn more."

Thus the Boston Traveler: "There's a fascination in getting back to school. Reunions, handshakes, friendships. The pleasantest side of education is the usage of today. Lessons used to be more painfully administered. Children are now less often asked to toil for future values which they cannot see. The instruction of youth is a great outpouring of personality. It is infinite tact, patience, idealism, faith. What the teacher is doing is really our work. The future of the commonwealth and nation is in the hands of the schools. Let us help them."

The Rochester, New York, Democrat Chronicle, helped by reminding father and mother that the school can't do it all: "The public schools are democracy's effort to provide equal educational opportunity for all its children. All any school asks of its children is obedience to its rules and recognition of its discipline. Its rules are that a child shall be prompt and punctual, obedient, industrious, honest, courteous and studious. Its discipline is that the child and its parents shall recognize constituted authority. In this way does the public school put a value on citizenship and seek to train the nation's young for the duties of an adult in a republic.

"Education can only reach its high aims through the coöperation of the homes from which the children come. No school can successfully combat the indifference of the home, but with the coöperation of the home it can do a mighty work. There never should be any misunderstanding between a public school and a home because of a child. There is not a problem arising between them that cannot be settled for the benefit of the child in a conference of the home and the school.

"What is needed is for the home to have better knowledge, and, consequently, a better understanding of the school. Not for the success of the school entirely, not for the happiness of the home entirely, but that the child may take a proper and selfrespecting place in the community and come into its ultimate heritage of those things that make life worth while.”

The good old Public Ledger, Philadelphia, can always be depended on to think the proper thing regarding public schools and to say it gracefully:

"More significant than an army with banners is the quarter million of young folks in Philadelphia who are starting their new school year today. A trite commonplace of our civic routine and regarded without much sentiment by the majority of the people, this schoolward movement of the multitude of the young is nevertheless of the very essence of the romance of our democratic form of government. In the nation. at large the pupil enrollment almost equals if it does not outnumber, all the armies of the world, and yet we make far more of a splurge over armies and navies than we do over these youthful hosts embattled in front of the geography and spelling-book.

"Most significant of all is the universal indorsement of the school idea throughout the land. In every village and city the school is popular and taxation for its support approved-something that is so well established that we forget how very recent it is. But there is much more to be done to meet the growing public demand for constant betterment in the whole educational scheme."

The hearty and whole-souled Westerner, who edits the Wichita, Kansas, Beacon, ought to be on the school Board. Hear him:

"Tomorrow morning the alarm clocks of the city will establish a new schedule for mothers, fathers, and the children. The bells and the teachers in 35 school buildings will be calling over 18,000 boys and girls back to their books. The most important industry of Wichita will begin to function, after the summer vacation. Down town

there will be the usual activities of buying and selling and manufacturing. Business will go forward as a matter of course, but the most thrilling thing now under way is in the effort to mould properly the minds and characters of these 18,000 in whose future our hopes are all invested, but in whose education a very limited interest is taken.

"Probably nothing better illustrates the optimism of America than the easy confidence with which we turn the oncoming generation over to the school teachers, wash our hands of all further responsibility, and go back to work. As a general thing the experiment has turned out well. Sometimes we are inclined to think that children have gotten along better than the parents. This year an effort will be made to organize parents into a keener and more intelligent understanding of what their children are doing. The theory is going to be exploited that the homes need education in order to enable the parent to keep up with his modern child.

"Teachers are always pleading for a larger and more intelligent interest on the part of parents in the work their children are doing in the school, and the activities that engage their thought when they are out of school. We hope the promoters of the new plan will have better than the usual success. Philosophers are fond of talking about problems of the age. There is only one real problem; that's the child in school and at home. If you solve him correctly the future will take care of itself."

On the other hand, from the state most given to praising (and sometimes to pinching) public school teachers comes this little sermon by the editor of the Lowell, Massachusetts, Telegram:

"Tomorrow the schools of Lowell open for the new year. Students and teachers alike are looking forward to this time. We expect much of our schools each year. We have a right to do this. We pay for their support and it is our privilege to expect them to do their best work.

"But the schools likewise have a right to

expect much of us. There are many duties we owe our schools and we should not hesitate to perform them. Some one says taxes are paid for the support of the schools, and that these taxes are paid religiously each year. This is true, and these taxes are vitally necessary. But money support is not the only kind a school needs. Every one feels he has a right to criticise the schools and continually find fault with them. Teachers do make mistakes, it is true, but one who has never taught cannot realize the things with which a teacher has to contend. What we need is more coöperation given our schools and less fault finding. The average teacher is sincere and gives her best effort. She is a hard worker. She has the interests of her pupils at heart. She puts in extra hours and does many other things which the public never hears anything about. But let her make a little mistake in judgment, and the tongues soon start wagging. The telephone bell of the superintendent starts tingling with incoming complaints; the school board is urged to summarily fire the 'worthless teacher.'

"We have a right to expect a teacher to give her best work, but she in turn is entitled to our coöperation. Parents should take an interest in the work of the school and visit schools more frequently. Such an attitude on the part of parents would have a gratifying effect and would result in much better schools. We hope for the best schools this year in the history of Lowell. Let's all do our part in making the schools what we want them to be."

But the Christian Science Monitor of Boston caught, best of all, the spirit of the appeal of the committee. This is what Editor Abbott said:

"We are indebted to the cartoonists for many truthful and refreshing glimpses of life. But in relation to one topic the majority of the well-known cartoonists appear to have shut their eyes and ears and have fallen back on a hackneyed tradition, and not a very truthful tradition either. Every June and every September brings forth a crop of cartoonists depicting

the schoolroom as a jail to which children, and especially little boys, are dragged bitterly against their will, and from which they escape at vacation time with such joy as if someone had made them a present of the world. The teacher is made to seem,

to the eyes of the small boy, a desiccated creature, half frump, half witch, hostile, and always ancient.

"One has only to look about to discover that this picture is both false and, so far as anyone accepts it, harmful. It is true, of course, and doubtless always will be, that practically everyone, even those most in love with their work, surrender care-free irresponsibility with regret. Routine is sometimes galling, even to teachers! It is true also that in older times the school was less vital in its choice of subject-matter, more unreal and stereotyped in its methods. It is true that some schools are still too much like treadmills. But are the cartoonists ignorant of the fact that vast changes are being wrought today all along these lines? Have they no gracious memories of their own school days, of teachers, both men and women, who planted in their hearts the seeds of courage, or of worthy ambition, or of hunger for knowledge? Though children are sharp critics, we know that they often become much attached to some of those who instruct them. Though they share in an exaggerated degree the common human enjoyment of vacations, they are glad enough to step back into the harness in the fall.

If all the year were playing holidays To sport would be as tedious as to work. "It was not into the mouth of a pedagogue that Shakespeare put these lines, but into the mouth of a wild, young boy.

"Left to themselves, with anything like fair conditions, children really enjoy school and fully appreciate what they acquire there. But children are very plastic to suggestions. These cartoons do harm, when they have any influence at all, because they induce, in pupils and parents a hostile and unfortunate and wholly unnecessary attitude toward the school."

Longer Schooling

Not Reducing Attendance

Whenever some hard-headed citizen thinks our idle children up to mischief in the streets and alleys, ought to be in school, there is a prompt response from some educational prophet that longer sessions will

reduce attendance. The editor of the Jersey City Journal remarks:

"The first monthly report of Superintendent of Schools Nugent serves to recall the rumpus that was caused by the announcement that the schools were to open September 1 this year, a whole week before Labor Day. Many of the pupils and teachers were distressed at the curtailment of their holiday and there was much talk of falling-off in attendance and losses for the school if the decision for the early opening was carried

out.

"The schools did open September 1 and the first monthly report shows that during the month there were eight hundred more pupils in attendance than during the same month last year. It seems that the folks who were so noisy in the criticism of the early opening were speaking more for themselves than for anyone else.'

Better Schooling And More Of It

Newark tried the all-year school. The advised superintendent abandoning it. Nashville thinks it the proper thing. The president of the Chicago Board of Education is said by the Tribune warmly to favor it. The laymen are editorializing upon it:

"A 12 months' public school session has been authorized by the Virginia Board of Education in a certain county of that State. The outcome of the experiment will be watched with interest by everyone interested in public education. More and more have educators come to the conclusion that the long summer vacation is an unwise interruption in the process of schooling.

"The assumption that the children need the rest from books has never been founded

on good evidence-in fact, all the evidence now indicates that the children's minds should be kept continuously busy. Even in Boston, for example, where there has never been any agitation for the elimination of the summer vacation, it has been found advisable to establish summer schools where the pupils may go and occupy their minds. It is true that their activities in these summer schools are quite different from the regular schools, but the evidence remains that enough children attend these schools to warrant their continuance.

"It is argued that teachers need the long vacation for rest and study. If more teachers were employed and assigned in shifts the long vacation might still be theirs under a 12-months system. But even if they were only given better pay, smaller numbers of children to handle and fewer hours to teach, they might not feel the need of the long vacation."-Boston Globe.

"In the days when life was much less complex and its problems much more simple the education of children was of much less concern than in these confusing times. Then it was not how much time they must give to school, but how little time they must be lost from labor. Not commercialized labor, but the doing of domestic chores about the farmhouse and the farm. As a result school terms were short and vacations long. Nor did the people count this an unprofitable apportionment.

"Times change and we change with them and social trends become revolutionized. The old fashion of summer vacation for schools remains in vogue, but much limited. The judgment of the moderns is fast forming into the concrete conclusion that even this limited period of idleness had best be abolished. The subject has been broached now and then editorially and in communications to the papers, and more and more the conviction has been pressing itself in upon the pedagogic conscience that the summer vacation is a relic of rural necessity wholly inimical to modern urban conditions. "This conviction has assumed the def

initeness of an organized movement in vacation reform. The Child's Study Association of America is sponsor for a stabilized system of summer vacation schools and is putting the idea into practice. In coöperation with the school authorities of New York as the largest among American cities seventeen summer play schools have been inaugurated. It may be said that play schools are not new, but that depends on the sort of play school meant. We have the school and community playgrounds under whole or partial supervision as a decided advance in child care and culture. But these do not form a part of the strictly educative program.

"In short, this movement is just an advance logical and sane on the social movements in way of vacation occupation for the children that recent years of progress have developed. More and more educators and parents and finally physicians have. become convinced that the aimless idleness of vacation is a mental, physical, and spiritual detriment to childhood. The playground and summer camps have helped, but they have not met the full need. There is left a hiatus in each year of needed mental training along school curriculum lines. Experiment has demonstrated that this, joined to the other, gives positive beneficial reaction.

"So we are preparing for young America a vacation period of directed occupation, varied in interest, inspiration, and instruction. It will be a part of education capsuled in vacation recreation. It will not give the child a pain nor will it offend child palate. Happiness will be enhanced, health conserved and school averages fattened without making holiday pleasures lean."-Cincinnati Commercial Appeal.

"The president of the Board of Education announces himself in readiness to propose a survey of the public school system, agreeable to the recommendation of the distinguished educators from outside the system who conducted a brief investigation of the all-year schools of this city last June.

"Such a survey, with such a test, should be made. The time to examine into the schools is now. If the system is defective seriously, or only in a minor and inconsequential degree, the defects ought to be uncovered and corrected. If, on the other hand, the schools are all right, with the exception that the all-year schools have been failures and more or less of a blight upon the system, a careful study conducted under expert and impartial auspices should show that.

"Still, the crux of the situation is the all-year school. Dr. Corson is fully convinced of the failure of that plan. His judgment is based upon an exhaustive study to which he has given his best professional skill and judgment. He began an ardent champion of the all-year school and ended as its most bitter adversary. His change of attitude resulted from his investigations and so rests upon the facts which he brought out, not upon mere bias.

"The proofs that convinced Dr. Corson would be available in an independent survey. They might be equally convincing to an outsider qualified to appraise them and approaching a study with an open mind.

"Friction exists now in places; too much of it. Some administration officers and some principals are affected. There are school politics and school politicians. Harmony in the board and throughout the School Department is far away. A thoroughly conducted survey would point to the deficiencies, even suggest a cure. We believe that as a whole our school system is too good to be allowed to become demoralized."-Newark, New Jersey, Evening News.

New York

And the Platoon Schools

Under the administration of Mayor Mitchel, New York after a study of the Gary schools by the metropolitan Mayor and the president of the Board of Education, began

taking up the slack of part time by means of the platoon system. As a political campaign came on, John F. Hylan discovered somehow that the platoon system was a diabolical invention of the plutocrats recruiting children for the mine and factory. "Down with the Gerry Sisters" was shouted in some neighborhood, these words indicating how far an understanding of the Gary System had penetrated. Mr. Hylan's campaign slogan was "A Seat For Every Child" meaning, of course, empty seats when children were in shop, assembly, or gymnasium. Eight years have passed. Many of New York City's most successful schools are still running on the platoon organization. The New York World comments:

"New York's school registration shows an increase of 12,000 in elementary and 15,000 in high schools, or about 25,000 altogether. For these children the Board of Education boasted that it has thirty-eight new schools, with 62,000 additional sittings. Just where does this leave the part-time situation and Mayor Hylan's promise of a seat for every child?

"It leaves it much worse than the surface facts indicate. At the close of school last June 71,253 pupils were on part time. The new schools now opening make it possible to reduce this by perhaps 30,000, or to about 41,250 pupils. This is a large number still. But it does not at all indicate the extent to which a seat for every child is lacking, for the matter of double sessions remains. The Board of Education has adopted a system of statistics which suppresses the exact extent of double sessions. But last June its official returns showed 85,871 pupils attending double-session schools before 8:30 A.M. or after 3:30 P. M. It is estimated that perhaps 100,000 others attended between these hours, making 185,000 on double sessions.

"Thus at the height of Mayor Hylan's effort to provide new schools, with a total sum of $166,500,000 appropriated for buildings, we entered the school year with about 225,000 pupils feeling what it is to lack