and games. If such terms as "Think it out," "Find a way," were used interchangeably with "study," little children would begin their school life with a clearer idea of what it means to study. It is natural for a child to enjoy study if study means the solution of a problem. Children take a delight in success, whether it is in the classroom or on the playground.

The business of the primary grades is not to give information, but to teach the children how to get it. To teach them how to work independently is of more importance than to teach them the technique of reading. The grammar grades and the high school need pupils who can think; they have plenty who can memorize words. But they will continue to be surfeited with lip workers until the primary school agrees to train the thought powers of the child, until it makes use of its rare privilege to form happy associations in his mind with "study" and "work.”

CHAPTER XIX

OUTDOOR PLAY

There is in the elementary school a serious lack of the right kind of wholesome exercise for the younger children. The same pedagogy which applies to the intellectual work of the primary-school child should regulate his exercise. Just as formal drill and technique in the presentation of subject matter stultifies the deepest instincts and potentialities of the child's mental life, so perfunctory, formal gymnastics impede his physical development.

Children need spirited, playful, imaginative, dramatic exercise which makes a demand upon their whole nature, -exercise which utilizes in an instinctive way the large, muscular masses that effect respiration, digestion, and excretion, which tone up the whole body through graceful, childlike abandon. The child's desire for play leads him unconsciously into an active, spirited, rhythmical use of his large, fundamental muscles. Rhythm is a loved impulse in child life and, if incorporated into his exercise, will lead to grace and artistic delight.

The kindergarten catches the child in the midst of this fluent, rhythmical expression, and lends a hand in rhythmic dances, ball plays, tiptoe games, and imitative and imaginative exercises. So far so good; but what of the primaryschool child, who is running over with the same deep tend encies and love of rhythmic play? He is cut off from this expression and is too often allowed only the rough, unorganized play of the recess hour, or the perfunctory shifting of

arms and legs to the solemn "up, down, up, down," of the tired teacher. For the lack of organized, spirited, dramatic play the primary-school child settles back on his heels and loses his innate buoyancy and grace.

The young child loves life and motion. He can fly like a bird, hop like a frog, run as lightly as the quail. He has a reverent interest in the earth, and likes to imitate and understand all the industries and activities around him. He will dig, plant, and rake. He will build, climb, jump, run, and skip; he is versatile beyond all expression and needs only the suggestion of his environment, coupled with the childlike wisdom of an understanding comrade, to supply him with the truest and happiest exercise of his whole body.

Why should the primary-school child, as soon as he leaves the kindergarten, be denied the inspiration of the piano? Why should he not continue to hear and express a variety of rhythmic moods? He is still a kindergarten child at heart and loves to march, run, skip, fly, dance, and swing to the persuasion of musical accompaniment. His exercise should continue to be joyous, graceful, free, exhilarating, unconscious. He cannot get it on the streets nor in the modern home. He must get it at the schools if he is to claim his proper heritage.

The child tingles with definite muscular coördinations; movements which have been of use to the race in its struggle with nature survive as pregnant tendencies in his neuromuscular machinery. Folk games, rhythmic plays, and dances call these into action and set the whole body of the child into sympathetic vibration. The gymnasium of the primary school should therefore be a covered outdoor pavilion with a piano and plenty of light and air. The children should dance, sing, march, walk, with vital step. They should play with balls, — big balls, little balls, balls

to roll, to toss, to bounce, to throw into a bottomless basket. They should climb ladders, roll hoops, fly kites, toss bean bags, knock down tenpins, and play a variety of selected folk games, with their mimicry and suggestion.

In a suggestive sentence in his book on "Age, Growth, and Death" Minot says: "When a cell is in the young state, it can grow rapidly; it can multiply freely; when it is in the old state, it loses those capacities, and its growth and multiplication are correspondingly impeded; and if the organization is carried to an extreme, the growth and the multiplication will cease altogether." Outdoor play, with its balanced, graceful, childlike use of the body, will create a reserve fund of energy, a deep well of health, from which the power to function accurately may be drawn later. But the child who substitutes organized physical drill for these more wholesome exercises is differentiating cells, not multiplying them; he is wearing out his muscles prematurely, not building them up.

If young children lived in an ideal atmosphere, where there was no interference with the wise plans of nature, the question of exercise would solve itself unconsciously in play, for play is the guardian of the child's physical health and furnishes the normal stimulus to the various organs and nerve centers of the body; but modern institutions, both social and educational, impose false conditions, and we must consciously set about to correct the complications we create. We must use certain definite gymnastic exercises to correct contracted chests and invite the respiratory organs to take in their normal quantity of oxygen. We are responsible for the bad postures and sluggish circulation which follow poor ventilation and confinement. We must therefore start the blood flowing naturally by the use of corrective, formal gymnastic exercises. But even these

must be enjoyed with spirit and laughter if we would accomplish results, and the amount of time given to such work depends upon the gravity of the false conditions which you yourself permit in your own classroom.

The startling results of the open-air schools have convinced us that growing children are as dependent upon pure air as upon wholesome food. But we are victims of an indoor habit, and it takes courage to be true to our convictions. A good way to begin, however, would be to oxygenate the primary-school child by holding every pos sible session outdoors, and by turning him out to play whenever the indoor busy-work proves unprofitable. Educate his sense of smell and respiratory organs so that he will rebel against confinement in a close, ill-ventilated room as he would against a shoe that pinches.

Children would return to their work vitalized and buoyant if short out-of-door intermissions were encouraged. It is conceded that we are a nervous, irritable people. One of the prime causes of this undue nervousness is a lack of oxygen. As certain chemical experiments go to prove, the nervous system, perhaps more than any other organ in the body, requires oxygen.

For many reasons children need short, intensive periods of work interspersed with many intermissions for fresh air and play. Dr. W. H. Burnham, in his article, "The Hygiene of Physical Education" (American Physical Education Review, Vol. XIV), says: "From the point of view of hygiene the aim of physical training is the development of habits of healthful activity (using the word 'habit' in its broadest sense): habits of digestion, excretion; habits of storing and expending energy; habits of coördination and control; and even the reflexes of the sympathetic nervous system, as well as the reactions of the central nervous system. .