128 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



places in the trees and shrubs. Forthwith practically every pupil in 

 the school volunteered to make boxes for the nests. Whether the 

 smaller children could make an entire box or not mattered but little; 

 the strength of their want through a real sense of the need, coupled 

 with the little they could do, added cubits to their moral stature. 



A practical difficulty in the way of teaching children to realize 

 their motives in some useful end, is that to many people it looks too 

 much like common work; there are parents, therefore, who strenu- 

 ously object. They say their children can get that at home, and that 

 the school should stand for something else — for culture ! This is a 

 curious fact, in view of the glorification that labor is now receiving at 

 the hands of the people. However, the large storekeepers do say that 

 this great revival of enthusiasm for labor has not as yet appreciably 

 increased the demand for overalls and jumpers. No one has reported, 

 so far, that the cuts of these elegant and useful trappings of toil are 

 appearing in the latest fashion plates of our high-class tailors. From 

 this it may be inferred that with most people the labor question has 

 not yet gone beyond the stage of academic discussion. Hence the 

 difficulty of getting the pupils actually to work either in school or at 

 home. Last year the children wished to have blooming plants in their 

 school-room windows. They thought to improve matters by substituting 

 for the unsightly pots the more beautiful creations of their own hands 

 which they could easily make in the clay-room. Immediately a parent 

 wrote that if our pupils could find nothing better to do than to make 

 jardinieres to beautify the University of Chicago he would take his 

 son from the school — and he did ! The kind of school which this type 

 of parent really wants is one where his boy can insensibly acquire 

 curvature of the spine, a sallow complexion, spectacles, and — culture ! 

 We have trade and technical schools that give education for the sake of 

 labor; we must now have schools that give us labor for the sake of 

 education. 



To sum up, therefore, the resources of the school which the teacher 

 may utilize in the development of a social organism we have on the 

 part of the pupils (1) a natural spirit of helpfulness; (2) an inborn 

 love of work; (3) a desire to take the initiative; (4) an ambition for 

 creative work; and (5) an alertness of mind toward public" needs. 

 Upon these foundation stones the social structure must be reared. 



That these qualities of character may be normally developed, the 

 curriculum must provide an abundance of suitable material; the class 

 exercises must keep to the forefront matters of public interest and the 

 entire organization must offer a maximum of freedom to the individual 

 who thinks and works in the interest of the common welfare. Every- 

 one recognizes these elements of character as being those which give us 

 the highest type of citizenship in the community at large. It is inter- 



