WHICH THE TEACHERS ARE TRYING TO HELP GROW INTO HEALTHY AND HAPPY WOMANHOOD BY DEVELOPING THEIR POWER TO UNDERSTAND, AND TO ENJOY MEETING, THE PRACTICAL ISSUES OF EVERY-DAY LIVING and to determine what change in any girl ought to ensue and to get whatever done by her that will produce that change. We are as habituated to the ding-dong of school There must be some real basis for the agreement of all the writers on education that the old mediæval aim of school to impart traditional knowledge is out of AFTER LATIN, LAUNDERING A NEW AND NECESSARY SEQUENCE IN THE TRAINING OF CITY-BRED GIRLS WHO HAVE FEW HOME FACILITIES FOR LEARNING HOUSEHOLD ARTS A PRACTICAL LESSON IN TASTE AND IN THE OPERATIONS OF DRESSMAKING THAT WILL BE A VITAL PART OF EVERY GIRL'S MATURE LIFE to do together. Training of children became a universal concern. What schoolmen had decided to let people have was well enough for monarchies. We have no mission to continue that. What parents want should be the concern of American schools, since 1776. To stand in loco parentis ought to mean that we, the public parents of the children of a free people, are not engaged to promulgate any scheme or system of our own. What an intelligent mother wishes her daughter to become is what we are obligated to produce. Therefore, we are trying to assist young, city-bred girls of thirteen and fourteen years of age to grow from what they are to what they ought to be at fifteen, eighteen, twenty, and eighty years of age. To us the children are the important considerations. The courses of study are of less importance. We wish to make the greatest success of every girl, and to do this we prefer maid to method, child to course, daughter to dogma. What we are trying to do is to use the STUDYING MODERN PENMANSHIP OF THE KIND THAT WILL BE MOST USEFUL TO THOSE GIRLS WHO LEAVE SCHOOL TO ENTER BUSINESS OFFICES studies the system requires, but to fit them to the girl, instead of perpetuating a round of exercises which some girls may follow but others may fail to do and thereupon lose interest and fall away. We are trying to abandon the fallacy that we should be loyal to our school or to our subjects or to high standards of scholarship or to any abstract, or formal, or traditional idea, at the expense of an immortal soul. We would rather have a hundred girls growing, every one in accordance with the best we can inspire her to do, than to raise the BUSINESS TRAINING FOR TO-DAY BY DUPLICATING IN THE SCHOOLROOM THE APPARATUS OF THE OFFICES INTO WHICH SOME OF THE GIRLS WILL GRADUATE PRACTICE IN THE SOCIAL GRACES THAT HAVE MORE TO DO WITH A GIRL'S SUCCESS IN LIFE THAN ALL THE FORMAL STUDIES OF A CONVENTIONAL SCHOOL COURSE SCIENCE FOR USE AT HOME A COURSE IN COOKING AND DIET THAT BRINGS CHEMISTRY AND HYGIENE INTO THEIR RELATION TO THE NEEDS OF DAILY LIFE percentage of our passing marks for a few to the point that our general average is the highest in the world. We are for girls first and for high averages, too, but not at the expense of health, and happiness, and human interest. In this we recognize that we must constantly run the risk of condemnation by earnest educators who regard high schools as institutions only for the intellectually elect. We feel that a mother's love for her less gifted child is as noble as it is natural. We know that there is no provision for the training of girls above thirteen who are slow, stupid, indolent, disrespectful, and untrained. Such need us more than the kind of girl which high school has often claimed as its only charge. High scholar ship is not our chief business. Training all the children of all the people is. We have no fixed standard for our young people, except, for almost every one, a higher grade than she is at the moment occupying. We are trying to dismiss from our own minds the old belief that high school is a privilege. It is the right of all. If our service were what it should be, every girl of thirteen and upward should be getting it. We lose large numbers of girls. Every one who leaves before graduation is a failure of the American purpose of universal education. We are participants in that failure. We are trying to discover and apply the forces by which girls are awakened, encouraged, and inspired to persevere. We are attempting to discard the unsuccessful spirit of criticism, correction, and blame which has become associated with our business. We would rather not appear as "correctors of youth." Success is positive, not negative. negative. Reprimand, when overdone, defeatsits own purpose. Expectation of success is success. We select every day some piece of work which has been well done, some improvement that has been made, and send the girl responsible for it to her grade adviser. It breaks the tradition that a school girl reporting to someone must have been guilty of a fault. We try to catch girls doing right and to recognize it. Too much alertness in a teacher for detection of wrong results in emphasis upon evil. In time it reacts upon the detective and contaminates her nature. There is no proof that teachers are morally superior to girls of thirteen to eighteen. To keep a school atmosphere fresh and sweet, it does not seem necessary to lecture a group of girls upon the fault of one. We have no general reprimands, no public apologies. We have no rules, no system of discipline. Our weak teachers can get help from our strong ones and eventually secure complete control by capitalizing the respect of a class and recognizing that the average tendency of any thirty girls is toward decency and gentle breeding. We failed when we ruled by fear and military methods; we succeeded when we banished suspicion, mistrust, and desire to show our authority. Whenever our institution has used in full measure the democratic idea of coöperation we have seemed to ourselves to go ahead. Such courses as were not prescribed by higher authority have been prepared collectively. The tendency to imitate some good course in some other school is no doubt as strong here as elsewhere. But that produces only a list of subjects to be learned CHEMISTRY THAT COUNTS A GIRL LEARNING HOW TO PASTEURIZE MILK FOR A BABY'S USE AS WELL AS WHAT GERMS ARE AND THE HARM THEY DO as knowledge, a purpose which all now declare is not the aim of education. The first thing with us in devising any new set of exercises is to formulate as well as we can what characteristics of a first-rate girl should be desired as a result of the time to be filled. Take civics, for example. Thirty-eight lessons are allotted by the powers that be for us to fill under this head. What should you wish a girl to be after a year of thinking about the questions that the authorities would permit you to assemble under the name of civics? We conceived that a young woman of eighteen should feel a personal obligation to serve the common good. In so far as possible her habit of mind should be inspired with a lively |