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Introduction 



Children and animals have always seemed a natural and whole- 

 some combination. One hates to think of a childhood without pets. 

 Yet that is the sort of barren childhood which the vast majority of 

 our city children nowadays are spending. There is no place for 

 these little dumb friends in the crowded homes, the crowded streets 

 and the crowded days of our modern city life. 



As in so many other ways, if old privileges are to be kept for 

 children under new conditions, the school must be the means of 

 bringing this about. If modern city children are to know the joy, 

 the beauty, the significance of animals, it is necessary that they be 

 included in the children's school home. The description in a book 

 is but a tame, a pathetic substitute for the live creature. A chip- 

 munk was taken as a visitor to a New York East Side class. Those 

 twelve-year-old children thought the little striped creature was a 

 tiger! They had studied a tiger in a book. 



To use animals in a school room along with other lessons is quite 

 in keeping with the general loosening up of school practices. It is 

 one more way of letting a child learn through his natural curiosity 

 and pleasure. But, like other expansions within a class room, it 

 involves adaptations. It raises practical problems which need 

 practical answers. Perhaps the answers contained in the following 

 paper may show teachers how to open the doors of their class rooms 

 to admit the historic friends of children — the animals. 



Committee on Toys and School Equipment 



