698 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1914. 
ing science. In recent years we have learned how to prevent many 
individual and social ills. The sciences of prevention are now domi- 
nant and ‘“‘hygiene”’ is in the air. But anew thought is already here— 
constructive effort. Social correction and medicine are still advanc- 
ing, prevention is commanding public opinion, but both are more or 
less futile without a foundation of constructive engineering. And 
education is the core of all constructive engineering which deals with 
the individual. 
Education is now the dominant science, the source of appeal in 
all social effort as well as in the efficient adjustment of the indi- 
vidual. Of the three forces determining what any individual shall 
be at maturity—heredity, activity, and environment—with the 
three corresponding sciences—eugenics, education, and social econ- 
omy—activity alone is the source of power in the individual after 
birth. The environment sets conditions for activity, therefore 
influences its result; but activity itself is the developer of all power, 
and education the science of constructive effort with the individual. 
Old, neglected, despised education has become the new inspiration 
in human engineering. 
Even the universities feel the new responsibility and schools of — 
education are arising, still dominated by the old narrow ideas of 
education as an intellectual process, but destined to fulfill their real 
function, producing engineers of child life and child adjustment to 
meet the requirements of an advancing civilization. This is the 
hope for democracy and civilization. 
3. THe Puay ScHoot A REINTERPRETED SCHOOL. 
The play school is proposed as the next step in the evolution of 
the elementary school. (1) It is suggested as the extra-home 
institutional center of child life in which the school and the playground 
are educationally fused and their aims identified; and where the 
child’s whole daily active life not supervised by the parents shall — 
be spent through the entire year from early infancy until the capacity 
to work consciously for adjustment has been established. (2) It is 
proposed as a center in which children shall learn to live and to work 
with enthusiasm by living completely in their activities, which include 
the whole physical and social environment and are organized to 
satisfy fully the child’s hungers for experience and self-expression. 
(3) It is proposed as a center for complete leadership, where the 
interest is centered in the child, not in subjects of study. 
The aims of the play school may be summarized as follows: 
(1) To organize the opportunity for a compléte play life in order 
that the child may develop his powers, learn the meaning of his 
environment, and discover himself. . 
