i2 4 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



anything to take its place except play. It is only too true that in many 

 schools where the old technical drills have been discarded, the teachers 

 have been unable to find anything worthy to take their place, and there 

 at once develops a tendency towards inferior social types of organiza- 

 tion. These lower social units taking root readily in a school where 

 many of the old arbitrary means of control have been abandoned, in- 

 evitably become immediately inimical to the broader interests of the 

 school as a whole. In this condition of affairs we find that raison d'etre 

 for the fraternities and sororities in the high schools. 



The prime necessity in the social organization of the school is that 

 there shall be an abundance of those activities which are capable of 

 yielding tangible results in worthy products having a common interest. 

 The distinction usually drawn between the activity of play and the 

 activity of work has neither meaning nor value in terms of growth. 

 Both play and work may be good or bad, educative or otherwise; that 

 depends alone upon the motive. The infallible test is found in the 

 character of the output; it is a measure that anyone may apply with 

 ease and directness when education is conceived to be a concern of the 

 familiar things of life. 



An educational activity with an organizing value is one which 

 expresses itself through some helpful work. This is not a machine- 

 made definition — it depends upon the nature of things. It is rooted 

 in the fact that every child is a born worker and a lover of work. To 

 work, to do things, to bring about results, useful and beautiful, is just 

 as natural as it is for him to breathe the air. There are no lazy 

 children, naturally. Catch them young and treat them right, and they 

 are all workers and lovers of work. A lazy boy is merely either one 

 who is sick, or one who does not like to do something which a ' grown- 

 up ' thinks he should do; his indisposition, if not a matter for the 

 physician, should be placed to his credit. A big boy came to my office 

 one day who was too lazy, the teacher said, to be allowed to remain 

 in school. I asked him what he would like to do if he were left entirely 

 free to choose, and he replied : ' I would quit school and go to work ! ' I 

 thanked him — inwardly — for his criticism, over which I have since 

 deeply pondered. Doubtless the 'work' which this boy would be able 

 to pick up in the streets would be as little to his taste as were the 

 tasks left behind in the school. For the average employer rarely con- 

 siders the soul-life of the employed. He stands a good chance of 

 falling into the hands of a man who wants to get more gold out of dry 

 goods and groceries than nature has put into them and he tries, there- 

 fore, to make up the deficit out of the boy. So between the teachers 

 who do not know enough and the business men who do not care enough 

 the lazy boys are easily turned into the path of the transgressor. Lazi- 

 ness is the merciful invention of nature, whereby she holds them 



