youth. To save to the world the best in youth we must begin by conserving the best in childhood.

G. Stanley Hall has emphasized the differences between the periods of childhood and adolescence. We are told that the former, especially between the ages of nine and twelve, is a period of relative stability, of independence, and of mechanical interests, the golden age of memory and habituation. It would be a mistake, however, to extend this characterization back to the primary-school age, which, instead of being marked by stability and susceptibility to drill and discipline, is naturally full of the change and spirit of adolescence. It is perhaps a nodal point in development in somewhat the same sense as adolescence, and, like it, is fraught with deep potentiality. A summary of its psychological traits would reveal many interesting parallelisms between the two epochs.

After all, the primary-school child is himself very much of a burgeoning youth, only smaller and somewhat less romantic. He too is naturally full of ardor and creative enthusiasm, "of beauty, variety, and suggestion." He too has spirit and is decidedly more than an unlettered youngster waiting with docility to learn the technique of culture, on the promise that it will be useful in later maturity. He has individuality, artistic temperament, and sense of personality. If we only understood him, he is saying, "Lo, I am here, too, and must be reckoned with." He is full of the joy of life and as impatient of dull routine as the spirited adolescent, though his rebellions are not as drastic and dramatic.

It is easier to say than to enact, but the truth remains that the first duty of school and state is to preserve his joy of life. Teachers should convince the child that life is beautiful. The primary-school child comes to school with the belief

that work is as lovely as play. See the zeal and pride with which he attacks his first intellectual problems, and the languor and discontent with which he often finishes them. Why is this? Why has the eager, buoyant first-grade child often become the so-called lazy incorrigible of the grammar grades? What has become of the pride in work, the eagerness to help, the dominating curiosity, and the warm, unselfish affection for teacher and school? Why have these deep instincts been strangled in their very birth? Why have they not been preserved to brighten and inspire the effort of his later years? Chiefly because school work loses almost immediately its intimate, human touch. It is separated from all emotional incentive and becomes the dry tedium of accumulating facts. Work is purposely made unlovely, too often associated with silence, punishment, and failure, while teachers emphasize false distinctions between it and play. Work and play, prescription and freedom, soon take sides against each other, and the child begins to show a preference; yet when he plays he works the hardest. Teachers have a puritanical habit of making work a duty and play a privilege. The gospel of the schools should be that work is lovely, that work is a privilege, that work makes use of imagination, self-expression, and joyous coöperation, and gives the individual a personal power. This will be accomplished only by changing the atmosphere of the schoolroom or workshop, by loosening the reins, humanizing the motives, and letting in some of the charm and personal contact that you meet in a studio where artists gather together to do creative work.

It is of supreme importance that we preserve healthy, eager attitudes. The child's emotional appreciation of life will be the foundation for the visions of his youth. From imitative play, friendly coöperation, and dramatic rehearsal

of life as he sees it, he will pass into ardent longings for life as it should be. But the seeds of such victory are not sown in languor or silent inhibition, but in active, constructive daily living which awakens and makes use of the whole capacity of the child.

It is our duty to plant the seeds of victory. The fires of youth burn with a peculiar intensity. "The blooming susceptibility of sex" makes the very blood press harder and hotter in the arteries. Everywhere, but especially in the factory and the street of the industrial city, is adolescence liable to storm, uncertainty, and perversion.

Primary-school teachers should begin to change the tradition of the streets by educating the child's capacity for healthy recreation; but she cannot do this if all her time is given to reading and writing. She must make room for more self-expression along motor lines in handwork and games. She must not merely teach new words, but she must educate a taste for literature. She must, through dramatic play and social coöperation, organize the emotional life of the children. Organization of the emotions, the culture of the imagination, and the creation of compelling interests will be a safeguard against garish penny shows, and will start in their place wholesome occupations for leisure hours. We are suffering as a people to-day because we cannot spend our leisure except in excitement. The true and deeper things of life lie untouched by the majority of people. When resourcefulness in both work and play have been developed, the battle of youth is already half won.

Humanitarian ideals of social service are the glory and safety of youth, but we must provide hospitable soil for these ideals by fostering the social instincts of childhood. Children in the primary school are not allowed to exchange ideas, communicate interests, or give help to one another;

we cannot afford to penalize them if they speak to a neighbor, or punish them on the ground of cheating if they show a friend how to do a piece of work. The first lessons in altruism can begin early.

Purity is another ideal which we expect of youth but do not provide for in the years before the full seed of the corn. This ideal should not be forged in the white heat of blind, heroic determination, but should be the outgrowth of years of accumulating acquaintance with nature's open secrets about plants and animals, about birth, heredity, infancy, and parenthood. A reverent contact with and wholesome insight into the elemental facts of sex may even begin with the study of nature in the primary school. In varied, subtle ways we can prepare the youth to look upon the grail of life's reality.

Childhood is the gateway to a larger experience, and the path over which the child is led broadens into the great highway over which the youth must walk alone. Here will be enacted the drama of the soul. Here will the child, now a youth, meet spiritual triumph or sordid defeat; but if in childhood the beauty of life and its freshness have been preserved to him, he will carry the blossoms of imagination and the fragrance of happy hours to guide the ardent feet of youth into clean, cool places.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

This is only a brief and selected bibliography. Readers who wish to extend the list of titles will find further bibliographies in the references starred (*). Dr. Louis N. Wilson, librarian at Clark University, Worcester, Massachusetts, has published "A Bibliography of Child Study" annually since 1898 in the Pedagogical Seminary. See also "A Bibliography of the Biological Aspects of Education," by Professor Will Grant Chambers, State Normal School, Greeley, Colorado.

PART ONE

DARWIN, CHARLES. The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, including an autobiographical chapter. D. Appleton and Company. New York.

A fascinating book with many suggestions for teachers.

FOSTER, MICHAEL. Lectures on the History of Physiology during the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. Cambridge, 1901. 310 pages.

Full of rare facts. The style is interesting.

HUGHES, JAMES L. Dickens as an Educator. New York, 1901.

319 pages.

Contains many quotations from Dickens's works.

LECKY, W. E. H. History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe. New York, 1873.

Two volumes in which will be found an animated discussion of the doctrine of child depravity.

*Locy, W. A. Biology and its Makers. Henry Holt and Company. New York, 1908. 469 pages.

A very readable, personal account of the history of biology, with portraits and other illustrations.

Proceedings of the Child Conferences for Research and Welfare. G. E. Stechert & Co. New York, 1909.

Contains scores of short papers dealing with every phase of child-welfare activity.