ful? Let us take one example: The Deptford School Clinic was started sixteen years ago by my dear sister and myself. It was the first and is still perhaps the most efficient clinic in London. Can we claim that we are dealing successfully in this clinic with the plagues of the slum? No. There is no provision we have yet made (and we have kept abreast of the latest methods) that insures any permanent cure to our children. They are in and out continually. No mere "treatment" can battle long against dirt and neglect, ignorance and poverty. We saw no results that could be called radical till we opened the first large open-air Nursery School.

My dear sister Rachel had a vision of education founded on nurture. She did not go to Blue books or to recognized authorities in order to see how to attempt new solutions. Nevertheless a new kind of solution was attempted when the first openair nursery was opened. It was started as a very small thing. There were only six children in the Open-Air Nursery School when it was begun at Evelyn House in 1911.

Early in 1914 we removed to a large site and took in thirty children. There was no sickness all that summer. Even before the great war certain very precious truths were won. It was found, for example, that nearly all the sickness among children was preventable. Also that shelters, with movable walls and open to the south, were the right form of building for this country-that the big problem of dealing with numbers could be solved by these shelters. The ideal number of children in one of them is thirty-five. There is, however, no objection at all to one principal having a school of six to ten shelters. On the contrary this group of shelters forming one school opens up undreamed of possibilities not only for better educational work, but for new economies.

The fact that we can take two or three

hundred children into an Open-Air Nursery School without risk of infection, without risk of overcrowding, without risk of mass treatment for all, has disposed forever, one hopes, of the bogies that frightened the authorities when the work began. It makes possible the gradual transforming of all Infant schools into Nursery schools— a thing which will make possible a new preventative service working at all our great social evils from the base. One can not tell all that this means even today. Still less can we even faintly image what it may signify tomorrow. One thing we can fairly prophecy even today. This form of school will supersede all forms of Infant school, at least in the crowded areas of large cities.

They come in early in the morning-our three hundred little ones-two hundred and fifty of whom are five and under. And then the things are done for them that are done for happier children in well-to-do nurseries: washing and brushing, combing, and, (if necessary) some change in dress, breakfast and fun, love and cherishing! Then at nine o'clock the day begins in other fashion than it can begin for neglected children in crowded classrooms. So much has been said of method in recent years that we are in some danger of forgetting how all these are but faint shadows of greater provision made with us, and offered from without. How the sun heals. How it evokes power also. How Nature multiplies opportunity of learning in any garden. How she stimulates and heals, wakens dormant power and gives the rhythms of activity to sleep! Often as I look at our garden, with its shelters, not crowded near one another, but spaced and separated by grass and flower bed, bird house and dugout, dove-cote and trees, and know how each is related to the others, yet separate from them all, I think we must have been held captive by some evil spell in the past.

A feeling of joy and relief comes to one as one reflects that these poor shelters are scattered like precious seed, and that this form of thing is Nature's own method. "No great thing," said Carlyle, "begins in a great display of power or wealth." No; the real wealth is in the humble thing, in the seed-corn, in the little child, not in masonry.

The staffing too is a revelation—an opening of gates. The Women's movement stirred woman to care for children, but did not provide her with great fields of service. On Care-Committees, even in Parliament, one is outside the field. But the Open-Air Nursery school calls to all the girls and women of good-will to come inside and learn, and help in earnest. Nurses, doctors, engineers, architects, social workers, society-ladies, police-women, health officers—whatever their career—they will be the better for learning about the children of the race. The girls of all these professions must learn from teachers how to teach, and from nursery school teachers how to give nurture. So in the Rachel McMillan Centre there are thirty-five students, all of whom serve for two or three hours per day in different shelters under teachers. When they go forth after a year's training they will be more than amateurs in woman's greatest work.

One word I must say about economics. The cost of feeding three hundred children is wonderfully small. The cost of feeding thirty children is very great. The finance of the small nursery schools has given our opponents their best ammunition. Even the Geddes Axe would not have kept the work in abeyance if no one could say with some grounds for the statement, "It will be very costly." That is why the small school, the ecole de luxe, should come later, not now when we are still fighting for the millions of little ones that are out

side. Our children have three meals per day-a two course dinner, and a breakfast and supper of brown bread or porridge and milk with a little fruit in summer and an extra now and then in winter. The cost, including the wages of one cook and a helper, is two shillings four pence per week. The cost per head inclusive for a nursery school child is £12 a year. It is less than a quarter of the cost of a child in a school for the crippled or blind. It is one-fifth of the cost of educating a child in a school for the deaf.

Our feet are on the threshold of a new world-a world where we shall deal mainly with causes, not effects, with prevention rather than cure. Alas! We have found that few diseases are wholly curable, but nearly all are preventable. That is the heart of this business. We are weary of trying to undo evil. We long now to create a world of beauty and peace. And we want to begin with our little children.

One question I am asked often will be answered here. "Do you not believe in the nursery class?" The form of this question is wrong. Who would not believe in the good private nursery, the good small nursery, in any place where real nurture is given? Of course I believe in giving nurture in any form. But when one looks out on the vast sea of spoiled human life, when one thinks of the millions now languishing in dim streets and alleys one is obliged to be practical and up-to-date. When Canada became the great corn-growing mart of the world she gave up all primitive kinds of ploughs and abandoned the little scythes and sickles of far-off lands and days. She got electric ploughs and reapers, and turned the engineer and inventor into her mammoth fields. What Canada did in order to feed the world, we must do to save the world. We need to solve more problems than the engineer. We must save

the home atmosphere, keep the small group that we call (when it belongs to one mother) a family, and we must while doing all this think in millions. At least three thousand Open-Air Nursery Schools are wanted badly in England. Ten thousand are needed. If we had twenty thousand we should have no more neglected children in this Island, and the heavy shadow of child wastage would fade like new dews in the breath of the morning. But these can not be toy schools of thirty. To their honor be it said that the Board of Education has fully acknowledged this and revised their regulations. Given these schools, our public life would be set in a new key. Our ministry of Health would be revolutionized. Our ministry of Education would see the curtain rise on a new world. Of the power and productivity of the citizens in this cleaned-up world we can not prophecy. We know little of these things in these days of colossal waste. Our research work today is often foiled not for want of zeal, but because of prejudice. We have to go back on our findings. We try to measure and isolate intelligence. Dimly it begins to dawn on some that nothing can be really isolated, that all is related, and that our neglected child is draped in many veils not one of which we can truly penetrate till we have saved and released him.

The Infant Welfare movement and its leaders are beginning to join up with us. They send us their students (to whom we

give shorter courses of training adapted to the Infant Centre's present-day needs.) What is more, they now aspire to give an ever better and longer training, to come in line indeed with the nursery school. They are building shelters. They are abandoning the old-time house and its limitations. In short, we begin to see solutions in prospect. All this is a new gift to the children of tomorrow.

We are happy too in testifying that the Board of Education has always hitherto been on a level with the high challenge of Life to us all. They have swiftly come in line with every new and proved truth, casting aside even their own old regulations when they seemed at war with the interests of the child. The Board now pays full grant for the training of teachers at the Rachel McMillan Centre and varies the form of this grant. Trained teachers are eligible for one year. Students take their first year training for their parchment and later we hope the whole college training will be given here.

It is a new world all the same, and the winds of a new life sweep through it. The joy of the children, growing in a big garden, the happiness of young girls who learn discipline from within rather than from without and who flock to this poor area in spite of all the poverty around, all this gives strength to our hope that one day England will "Educate every child as if it were its own."

McMillan, Margaret. The Nursery School. E. P. Dutton & Company.

STEVINSON, E. The Open-Air Nursery School. E. P. Dutton & Company.

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LTHOUGH the first nursery school was founded by Robert Owen in 1816,* we must keep in mind that group work for the pre-school child from favorable homes has still to prove its superior possibilities over the best care in individual homes. The first governmental recognition of such group care, the Fisher Education Act, empowers the local educational authorities in England "to supply nursery schools for children over two and under five whose attendance at such a school is necessary or desirable for their healthy physical and mental development." How are we to know when attendance at such schools is necessary and desirable until much more experimental work has been done and the advantages of group training for the child from two to five carefully compared with the advantages of individual training of such children in homes where the conditions are as favorable as we hope to make them in the best nursery schools? A thoroughly open-minded experimental attitude is essential but in maintaining such an attitude, we must not lose any values already gained. To develop nursery schools for children who have unfortunate home conditions is a very different thing from urging that nursery school education is the ideal for all children. As Dr. Gesell points out, and as is evidenced by years of work in the field of child welfare, the strengthening of the parent-child relation is one fundamental principle which must underlie all sound educational and social work. We

*See Gesell, Arnold, "The Significance of the Nursery School," Childhood Education, Vol. I. No. 1, September, 1924.

must open-mindedly study how this may best be done.

Educational work for the pre-school age child is being carried on in four centers in or near Philadelphia. This work is so new however that few conclusions, if any, can be offered. One play group organized in 1922 in a suburb has had from eight to twelve children from two and a half to six years of age. The first two years all of them came from favorably situated homes. Carson College, an orphanage for girls, has now become the center for this educational experiment and children from more varying home backgrounds have been included, together with several of the original number. These children have come together in the morning only. The equipment and procedure has been determined by the children's need for the correct habit formation together with the utmost freedom for selfexpression consistent with the rights of the social group. Much of the work is done out-of-doors. This work has been most fortunate in having the continuous supervision of a teacher of wide experience and unusual creative ability in dealing with children of varying ages in their play life. It is in the nature of a laboratory and is being utilized for vocational training for the older girls in Carson College in the physical and mental care of the pre-school age child.

The Neighborhood Centre, a settlement which has existed for many years in a crowded section of Philadelphia, for years has had its day nursery. In August, 1924, it selected eight of the children from eighteen months to four years of age who had been attending its day nursery and placed them

under the care of a trained psychologist in an environment especially planned for their best physical, mental and spiritual development. There is one American child, one Italian, two Polish, and the rest are Russian Jewish. The greater part of the time these children play on a sunny roof garden equipped with swings, seesaws, slides, large outdoor blocks, a sand box, kiddy cars, wagons and balls of varying sizes. In addition to the roof, there is a large play room artistically furnished, equipped with small tables and chairs, piano and victrola, dolls and dolls' furniture, an indoor slide with large mat, blocks and other indoor toys. The children arrive at eight and remain until six o'clock. At luncheon the children themselves do the serving and are taught to feed and care for themselves; the daily naps in the rows of white cribs offer opportunity for lessons in dressing and undressing. The educational significance of the early years of childhood is uppermost in the minds of those in charge of this work. It is the aim to prepare the child for life, by the right habit formation, including adjustment to other members of the group. From the fact that these children were selected from a day nursery group, they come from broken or abnormal homes, and emphasis is placed on the education of the parents, the effort being made to bring the standards of the home up to the standards prevailing in the nursery school. Intensive case work is carried on in the home. Each child undergoes a monthly physical examination and the best medical service is at all times available. Relief is supplied if needed and individual conferences are held frequently with the mothers when they visit the School. In addition the mothers are brought together about once a month for social meetings when problems connected with their children are dis

cussed. Twice a year it is planned to give a mental examination to all the children. In addition daily records are kept concerning the more important activities of the day. One day of every month it is hoped to make a complete record of each individual child, including the most important things that he does and says, from which his vocabulary at various intervals is computed. At the same time a follow-up system is being planned, in order that the children who have had the Nursery School training may be compared with other children who have not. If a comparative study can be made of the progress of the two groups in kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, together with the home conditions of both groups, valuable data should be secured to pool with data of a similar kind secured elsewhere.

Stimulated by the interest in the plans mentioned and by visits to nursery schools in other cities, the Smith Memorial Playground, which is one of a series of play centers in crowded sections of Philadelphia, selected twenty-five children ranging in age from two to three and a quarter years from the registration list on Baby Day in August, 1924. After the homes of these children were visited to secure the interest of their parents, fourteen were selected and their parents invited to a social meeting when the plan of the proposed Play School was described in detail, the necessity of the cooperation of the parents being stressed. The school opened October 6th, with eleven children. It is in charge of a trained kindergartner, a mother of two children. Due to limitation of space and equipment the hours are from nine to twelve only. The children have an enclosed court outdoors, with sand pile, empty cement pool, slide, and balls. In the large play room immediately adjoining this yard are blocks, crayons, pencils, plasticine, small cars,