way for our life tests. The Binet Tests, with their too accurate 
data, almost put these life tests of ours to shame. 
How then, is one to check up a piece of work such as is being' 
done at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for boys and girls? In 
the first place, it is possible all the time by incidental questions, 
not by mere formal examination, to find out whether or not the 
child has absorbed the body of knowledge which one has planned 
for his special needs. How is it ever possible to find out whether 
or not anyone is able to put knowledge into everyday practice ? 
That has always been a puzzling problem. We hear a great deal 
to-day about project work, and about training for good citizen- 
ship. Almost every good teacher, from time immemorial, has 
been training his students for good citizenship and has been giv- 
ing project work. During the six years the boys and girls have 
been working at the Botanic Garden, certain pieces of work have 
been presented to them, which I suppose would go under the 
heading of project work, and which check up the body of knowl- 
edge these boys and girls have. 
For example, during last summer we faced a serious problem 
in our garden. Three hundred and twenty boys and girls were 
to garden for six months. Three hundred and twenty boys and 
girls must have lessons and must be cared for. How was this to 
work out ? Our trained help was too few in number. Out of the 
320 children about thirty boys and girls had been at the Botanic 
Garden from three to five years. Should it not be possible for 
those boys and girls to be used, to put the knowledge they had 
gained into practice ? So each one was presented with a given 
number of children, according to his talents, and each was re- 
sponsible for these young children, not only in garden work, but 
in garden behaviour, because one of the most valuable lessons 
taught in the garden is that of the right attitude toward our chil- 
dren's garden and the Botanic Garden as an institution and toward 
life in general. These boys and girls were not given a certain 
block of the garden to look out for. The individual children 
were placed all over the garden, so that there should be no spots 
too weak and no situations too entertaining. It was amazing to 
see the amount of real good work done by these boys and girls 
of approximately fifteen years of age. They taught the children 
with great pains, and perhaps with more labor than a grown per- 
son would have given to the individual, and the children re- 
sponded with perhaps greater delight to these youthful teachers 
than they would have to the trained teachers. Of course, all the 
time these boys and girls were supervised by trained people, 
although the supervision was planned to be so apparently casual 
that they never knew of this check-up. This is an illustration of 
how one may test out the knowledge of a child. 
