NEW LIFE IN OLD SUBJECTS 
17; 
publishing house but in accordance with children’s daily 
needs ; and freedom to do this, whatever the subject, stimu- 
lates the teacher. Certain it is that every time a teacher re- 
peats the happy experience of answering real questions, of 
ministering to a child’s actual need, she becomes less tolerant 
of stuffing even willing children with information to be used 
in later life. 
Not long ago it happened that some visitors were listening 
to an examination of the Little Housekeepers class. Many 
questions had been answered with surprising accuracy and 
promptness, khnally, a question was passed along from child 
to child accompanied by scowls and shakes of the head on 
the part of the little girls. The question was, " How often 
should windows be washed ? ” This important fact had of 
course been taught, but somehow everybody had forgotten. 
In this moment of suspense one child spoke out, to the sur- 
prise of the teacher and the delight of the visitors, ” When 
they need it.” This refreshing answer might be given with 
equal effect by many a grown person regarding matters of 
detail in a course of study. 
Some, at least, of the instruction given to children might 
properly be furnished them in response to their own demand. 
Older persons, of course, are in a measure justihed in antici- 
pating the needs of the future for their children ; and yet no 
generation, with all its store of wisdom, has ever sounded 
exactly the dominant note of the next. Many are the mis- 
takes in education which are never told in words. Indeed, it 
is only when some distinguished man or woman discloses the 
incidents of his early training that we listen, startled by the 
truth. Pitifully enough, many of these failures have happened 
in the discharge of what is piously called the parents’ or the 
teacher’s duty. The shortsightedness of teachers is a by- 
word when it is a question of recognizing in a pupil the taste 
