erdinates, as some would have us think.

=Life as subject matter in teaching.=--In teaching school, therefore,
the subject matter with which we have to do is life--nothing more and
nothing less. We may call it history, or mathematics, or literature, or
psychology,--but it still remains true that life is the real objective
of all our activities. And, as has been already said, we are teaching
life by the laboratory method. We are striving to interpret the thing in
which we are immersed. We feel, and think, and aspire, and love, and
enjoy. All these are life; and from this life we are striving to extract
strength that our feeling may be deeper, our thinking higher, our
aspirations wider and more lofty, our love purer and nobler, and our own
enjoyment greater. By absorbing the life that is all about us we strive
to have more abundant and abounding life.

=The teacher's province.=--Such is the province of one who essays the
task of teaching school. School is life, as we have been told; but, at
the same time, it is a place and an occasion for teaching life. If we
could detach history from life, it would cease to be history. If
literature is not life, it is not literature; and so with the sciences.
These branches are but variants or branches of life, and all emanate
from a common center. Whether we scan the heavens, penetrate the depths
of the sea, pore over the pages of books, or look into the minds and
hearts of men, we are striving after an interpretation of life.

QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES

1. Distinguish between a "school teacher" and a "man or woman who
teaches school."

2. Discuss the importance of the following agencies of the school in
securing for children "life of a better quality and more abundant":
play; revitalized curricula; vitalized teachers; medical inspection;
social centers; moral instruction.

3. Discuss both from the standpoint of present practice and ideal
educational principles: "More abundant life rather than knowledge is the
chief end of instruction."

4. What changes are necessary in school curricula and in the methods of
school organization, instruction, and discipline, in order that the
chief purpose of our schools, "more abundant _life_," may be realized?

5. Justify the apparent length of the school day to teachers and pupils,
as a means of determining the quality of the work of the school.

6. Some teachers maintain that school is a preparation for life, while
the author maintains that