on of the readiness of the boys to
take up and profit by this subject, but is only a matter of equipment
and teaching.

_Music and art._ Nor should the finer aspects of culture be left out of
the education of the country child. He will learn music as readily as
the city child, and love it not less. Indeed, he needs it even more as a
part of his schooling, since the opportunities to hear and enjoy music
are always at hand in the city, and nearly always lacking in the
country. The child should be taught to sing and at least to understand
and appreciate music of worthy type.

The same principle will apply to art. The great masterpieces of painting
and sculpture have as much of beauty and inspiration in them as the
great masterpieces of literature. Yet most rural children complete their
schooling hardly having seen in the schoolroom a worthy copy of a great
picture, and much less have they been taught the significance of great
works of art or been led to appreciate and love them.

_Physical training._ It has been argued by many that the rural child has
enough exercise and hence does not need physical training. But this
position entirely misconceives the purpose of physical training. One may
have plenty of exercise, even too much exercise, without securing a
well-balanced physical development. Indeed, certain forms of farm work
done by children are often so severe a tax on their strength that a
corrective exercise is necessary in order to save stooped forms, curved
spines, and hollow chests. Furthermore, the farm child, lacking the
opportunities of the city child for gaining social ease and control,
needs the development that comes from physical training to give poise,
ease of bearing, and grace of movement.

Nor must the athletic phase of physical training be overlooked. While it
is undoubtedly true that athletics have come to occupy too large a part
of the time and absorb too great a proportion of the interest in many
schools, yet this is no reason for omitting avocational training wholly
from the rural school. Children require the training and development
that come from games and play quite as much as they need that coming
from work. The school owes a duty to the avocational side of life as
well as to the vocational.

The curriculum here proposed is so much broader and richer than that now
offered in the rural district school that it will appear to many to be
visionary and impossible. That it is impossible for the ol