exhaustive study of any one subject or topic, as it is to lay a broad foundation of interest and appreciation, such as to induce the child to continue the work after he leaves school. If, then, his attention be centered upon the most obvious features of each of the characteristic areas, and if, in his mind, there be grouped in each of these regions such a body of concrete material and related detail, selected to give meaning to the "characteristics," then all will have been accomplished that our point of view demands. In short, therefore, as with representative geography, it becomes easy and possible to select the characteristic features of each of the important geographical regions, and to present these and these only in our schools.

In such presentation the teacher should rest back heavily upon the method of organized oral discussion, based, so far as possible, on the reading of interesting illustrated material by the child. A kaleidoscopic method of handling the work of the recitation not only renders the teacher's desire to check results ineffective, but it leads to mental distraction on the child's part, which ultimately works out into careless habits of reading and study.

In the course of the presentation of the given lesson unit the teacher will find that there are certain facts which have value in themselves, apart from their use in the development of the point receiving treatment. These intrinsically valuable facts should be gathered up at the close of the lesson unit and drilled upon from time to time, in order to insure their permanent retention. Through these means the child who terminates this cycle of work should have the characteristic areas of the world in mind, and associated with each, and without confusion, he should have those representative, descriptive, and physical essentials which give the several regions their individuality, and a knowledge of which the social group demands for the abundant entrance of its members.

The schools, too, must give knowledge sufficient to conserve health and protect life, for one's health and one's life and the conserving of the health and lives of others are fundamental to social efficiency. Such knowledge demands three things: A body of health information; the establishment of some common health habits; and the imparting of specific instruction, made automatic, respecting what to do when confronted with any one of a few of the common emergencies which may at any time arise in the experience of each.

Health information should be centered about the view that the human body is a living machine which accumulates energy from the food it consumes; gives off waste substances, for it can not change all of its food into energy any more than can a locomotive or a steam engine; and repairs itself as it goes along, although it finally wears out. In the discussions and investigations of the pupils respecting the important organs of the body the teacher should dwell

particularly upon those things which interfere with the proper action of this living machine, and how it may be managed so as to give the best possible work with the least waste of energy.1 This thought should be given a place of first importance, that nature has provided the body with defenses against the things which would attack it, which, if properly conserved and cared for, will insure good health and long life.

In turn, the courses of disease should be considered and the suggestion noted that serious inroads are made only when the natural resistance power of the body has been weakened through sudden chilling; through unhealthful occupations; through loss of sleep; through poor food, or too little, or too much food; through bad habits; through debilitating climates; through breathing impure air; not to mention other common means. Contagious diseases, too, should be considered, and what students have found out about their control and cure, and how the spread of the more common ones can be prevented, with emphasis upon the final conclusion that control of these diseases is largely a matter of complete cleanliness of person and of surroundings, and that disease can not thrive where there are clean habits, sunshine, fresh air, and variety and simplicity in food. The children of this cycle are not too immature to understand much of what is being done for the health of communities. The care of the local water supply; methods for disposing of sewage and garbage; the fight against the common drinking cup, the house fly, and the mosquito; the cleaning up of streets and back yards; the antispitting crusade; the screening of edibles on display at stores; and the fight for clean milk and pure food, are all topics which are of commanding importance and in which the masses must be interested if health conditions in country and city are to be improved.

Health habits are quite as important in the life of the individual as a body of health information. It should be the duty of the home and of the school to place in the possession of every child a daily routine of personal acts, designed to insure healthful living, and their practice should be compelled until they take their places among the things which we do without thinking. If such acts do not become automatic in the life of the child, education will have failed in an important particular.2 The place for forming the common health habits is in the home, but if, as is too frequently the case, the home has neglected this important duty, the teacher must step in and seek to make up to the child what he has lost.

Scarcely a day passes that one does not hear of some accident wherein a life could have been saved by the prompt action of some one who knew exactly what to do. In such an emergency, sympathy and

1 See the point of view in Hoag, Health Studies. Heath & Co.

2 For a suggested daily routine see Allen, Civics and Health, pp. 212, 213.

good intentions are no substitute for specific information. Definite knowledge respecting the emergencies which may happen any moment should be systematically imparted by the school, and the correct procedure drilled upon until the proper routine in each instance becomes relatively automatic. Furthermore, self-possession and presence of mind in the face of danger can be more certainly depended upon if the individual finds the situation one about which he has previously thought and for which he is in part prepared. The school, therefore, should give every child in this first period of its work a simple course in first aid to the injured, besides emphasizing at every opportunity the precaution which should be taken to avoid accidents.

For example, every child, in this cycle of work, should be taught how to start artificial respiration; 1 how to carry the injured; how to stop bleeding when a vein or an artery is cut; what to do when a person's clothing is on fire; how to treat the common poisons, and, more especially, how to prevent any possible chance of taking poison; how to revive a person who has fainted; what is first to be done for serious burns; how to detach a person from a live wire; what should be done when the discovery is made that a building is on fire; how to get on and off street cars; how to avoid danger in crossing a street; and, further, it is my belief that every child should be taught how to swim, because in the act of learning one overcomes the fear of deep water, and thus his presence of mind may be relied on in accidents on water. The work of the schoolroom in preparation for the common emergencies should not stop with mere discussions. Actual demonstrations, wherever possible, should be made, and a specific routine in each case drilled upon so thoroughly that there will not be a moment's hesitation on the part of any child due to uncertainty or confusion of mind.

Preparation for general social efficiency, beyond which the schools can not go in this first cycle of work, demands, further, that the individual shall know how to employ his leisure profitably. It is not enough that he have possession of the "tools" of an education; that he speak and write his thoughts with clearness and ease; that he know somewhat of his own environment and that of other peoples and races; and that he be placed in possession of that body of information and habits necessary to conserving his health and protecting his life; besides all this, the school and home must consciously seek to elevate the range of his possible pleasures, for of necessity these comprise a large part of the activities of every well-ordered life.

1 A simple way is described by Gulick, Emergencies, pp. 126-130.

2 Two excellent bulletins on fire dangers and the means of prevention are used in the schools of Montana. See Clarence Maxis, Dangers and Chemistry of Fire, one for the primary schools and the other for grammar schools. (Prepared for the State fire marshal's department of Ohio.)

One of the highest aims of the school should be that of raising the standards of the pupils respecting their pleasures, and gradually thereby to effect a transition from those which are mainly physical and sensory in their nature to those which make an intellectual and spiritual appeal. A distinct and significant gain in the life of the individual will have been made when a good opera, a fine, wholesome play, an art exhibit, a clean, vigorous athletic contest, a thoughtful sermon or lecture, a good book will draw him away from what is cheap and vulgar. Within the fields of music, of art, and of literature will be found the content adapted to the accomplishment of this high purpose. Through a careful selection of material with due regard to the child's development, much can be done within the period embraced by the first six grades in laying the foundations of interest in and appreciation of the best things which these arts have contributed. This will go far toward turning the masses toward pleasures of a high order.

The heart of the work thus outlined is seen to do with the acquisition of a learning technique. In method, this requires reliance upon repetition and drill-methods peculiarly effective in the formation of habits at once suggesting an interesting correlation with the characteristics of the preadolescent stage which the years of this cycle cover. This is emphasized by Hall, who, in describing the prepubescent period, says:

Never again will there be such susceptibility to drill and discipline, such plasticity to habituation, or such ready adjustment to new conditions. It is the age of external and mechanical training. Reading, writing, drawing, manual training, musical technique, foreign languages and their pronunciation, the manipulation of numbers and of geometrical elements, and many kinds of skill have now their golden hour; and if it passes unimproved, all these can never be acquired later without a heavy handicap of disadvantage and loss. * * * The automatic powers are now at their very apex, and they can do and bear more than our degenerate pedagogy knows or dreams of.1

If one were to select a single word which would best express the chief demand on the school in this its first period, that word would be, perhaps, "literacy." Six years, beginning with the child of 6, is too short a time for the school to accomplish much more. Yet if this be done the child will have gained from the school the means for acquiring an education, even though circumstances compel him at this early age to drop from the ranks of his school fellows. Under our traditonal arrangement of grades the process of securing that which the term "literacy" denotes is dragged out over a period of eight or nine years; thus the time when habits are most easily formed is not utilized to the full, and, again, the habit-forming process, with its requisite drill and mechanical repetition, is projected past the

1 Hall, Youth: Its Education, Regimen, and Hygiene, p. 5.

beginning of the period when the child's interest has shifted to content and away from form and technique. This failure of the system to recognize the fundamental changes which the dawn of adolescence ushers in, and to set them off in sharp contrast to those of the preadolescent age, accounts in considerable measure for the loss of interest which is frequently to be noted among the children of the upper grades of our elementary schools. It is likewise a factor contributing to the break in attendance which comes in these years.

Such are the considerations which have guided in the formation of a course of study for the elementary schools of Berkeley, Cal., the details of which have been worked out with the able assistance of Miss Alma M. Patterson, then supervisor of the elementary schools of that city, now of the Los Angeles State Normal School.