arer. After all it was possible to connect education with life.

Slowly the light of this truth dawned upon men's minds. Gradually the
way opened before them. One by one they trod the path, bridging the
worst defiles, straightening the road, cutting out the thickets and
filling in the morasses, until at last, behold the way, explored by
hesitating, derided pioneers, no longer a trail, but a broad highway.
Others have gone--their name is legion--and have succeeded. The three
R's are but the beginning of an adequate elementary curriculum. You, in
your own city, with your own teachers, can vitalize your elementary
schools. You can teach the children to use their heads and hands
together, and thus show them the way to a deeper interest in your
schools, and a larger outlook on their work in life.

CHAPTER V

KEEPING THE HIGH SCHOOL IN STEP WITH LIFE

I The Responsibility of the High School

"Every pupil of high school maturity should be in high school atmosphere
whether he has completed the work of the grammar grades or not," insists
Dr. F. E. Spaulding. "Perhaps the high school course of study is not
adapted to the needs of such children. Well, so much the worse for the
course of study. The sooner the high school suits its work to the needs
of fourteen and fifteen-year-old boys and girls, the sooner it will be
filling its true place in the community." Such opinions, voiced in this
case by a man whose national reputation is founded on his splendid work
as superintendent of the school system of Newton Mass., bespeak the
attitude of the most progressive American high schools.

The high school is not a training ground for colleges, nor is it a
repository of classical lore. As an advanced school it differs no more
from the elementary school than the six cylinder automobile differs from
the four cylinder car. Though its work is more complex, like the
elementary school it exists for the sole purpose of helping children to
live wholesome, efficient lives.

II An Experiment in Futures

Children who get stranded in the seventh or eighth grades may have
failed in one subject or in several. Over age and out of place, they
lose interest, become discouraged and at fourteen drop out of school to
work or to idle. In Newton, as in every other town, there were a number
of just such children whom Mr. Spaulding decided to get into the high
school.

"There they will be among children of their own age," he explained.
"They m