696 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
the younger children, leaders have organized ‘‘play”’ instead of ‘‘work”’ 
without knowing it. 
The gardening movement, geography excursions, and the shift 
in nature study-from that of plucked and dissected symbols to 
a study of nature in action—changing, growing, eating, repro- 
ducing, struggling nature with all its vital human relationships— 
all these activities emphasize the fact that “learnmg’’ must be a part 
of life and built on vitalizing, mind-filling experience. 
The focal pomt of thought in these movements drifts toward the 
organization of the child’s whole life experience on a concrete labor- 
~atory basis. Jt involves a recognition of child capacities and needs 
previously furnished in natural contacts with a simple adult life now 
passed away. 
Vocational training and guidance are receiving their emphasis. 
Adjustment for the masses is the aim, but vocational adjustment 
is only one phase of life—the adjustment of the adult. Avocational 
or recreational adjustment, social adjustment, citizenship adjustment, 
and domestic adjustment are coordinate, and they all depend upon 
the developmental or educational adjustment durmg the years of 
growth. Obviously shallow is a vocational training and guidance 
that is not based on educational provisions that allow the child all 
his early years for enthusiastic living and achieving until the work 
mechanism is established and talents, interests, or capacities are 
developed, and until expert leaders who are guiding this living process 
may discover individual tendencies and adaptabilities. Further- 
more, a vocational training that is not based on organic, nervous, 
intellectual, and moral development, and that is not coordinated with 
a social and recreative adjustment and a preparation for citizenship 
and domestic life adjustment, is bound to produce workers that are 
but inflexible cogs in the wheel of a gigantic machine which will 
inhibit. both individual and social progress. 
The new efforts for backward and exceptional children reveal the 
recognition of the fact that our wonderful school mechanism has 
failed in results for great masses of children. The consciousness is 
growing that the universal ‘‘child’”’ when differentiated into individuals 
is as variable as the number of children and that each must be edu- 
cated in a variable and adaptable program. This is perfectly prac- 
tical when activities rather than subjects of study are organized. 
The campaign for school hygiene has become almost hysterical. 
Accumulating evidence has shown the physical, mental, and moral 
effects of long hours, confinement and overpressure in mental work. 
Nevertheless, there is a demand for a broader manual training, a 
larger nature study, a fuller ‘‘physical education,” and an efficient 
moral education—all interpreted as “subjects of study’’ and added to 
