LITTLE STUDIES IN COOPERATION 43 



Is not the divining rod, if there is such a thing, usually 

 held b\- one's peers, be they five years old or fifty ? At any 

 rate, students certainly make wonderful guesses, and they hit 

 the mark at least as often as professors. 



A grown person who watches and studies the personalities 

 in a self-organized group of children arrives at certain con- 

 clusions. Such a group, intent on its own serious business, 

 has no use for mere talk ; nevertheless any member who can 

 argue well and can win support for some precious plan is a 

 real acquisition. Common sense, a gift which takes prizes 

 out in the world, but which in the classroom scarcely gets 

 honorable mention, here in the heat of action carries off 

 many a blue ribbon ; whereas the wage of the habitual 

 "windbag" or lazybones is that he is not welcome in any 

 group, and is forced to right-about-face or have a lonely time 

 of it. The sting of being left out when "all the fellows" 

 are carr\-ing out " great old plans " hurts him more than the 

 loss of fifty credits decreed by a spectacled teacher. 



Fortunately, when a plan is being carried out at white heat, 

 a place is usually found, even at the eleventh hour, for every- 

 body who can contribute anything. At such a crisis a pupil 

 who is backward at books, who stutterc, — it may be out 

 of sheer self-consciousness, — whose memory for dates and 

 schoolbook phrases plays him mortifying tricks, whose in- 

 difference during recitations has soured into actual mischief- 

 making, may suddenly find himself committed to a piece of 

 real business that brings out the man in him. 



One simple incident will drive this home. It happened 

 one spring afternoon at the garden lesson. The dunce of a 

 grammar school class — whose mind, poor chap, was scarcely 

 normal — took his place as a real person among classmates 

 who had hitherto totally ignored his existence. Eddie had 

 learned, never mind in what stern school of life, the meaning 



