rial work in the high school. The latter group does extra
sewing or shop-work twice each week.

"Again, we take all over-age and over-size pupils from the schools in
this section of the city, and by placing them in ungraded classes,
permit them to take the work which they can do. Here is a boy who cannot
master grammar. That is no reason why he should not design jewelry, so
we give him fourth year language, and take him into the tenth year class
in jewelry design. Yes, and he makes good, doing excellent craft work
and gradually pulling up in his language. By this means we make our
twelve grade school fit the needs of any and every pupil who may come to
it.

"We have a natural educational progress for twelve years," concluded Mr.
Gilbert. "There is no break anywhere. Instead of making it hard to step
from grade eight to grade nine, we interrelate them so intimately that
the student scarcely feels the change from one to the other. The result?
Last June there were 152 pupils in our eighth grade. Of that number 118,
or more than three-quarters of them reported in the ninth grade this
fall. We have cancelled the invitation to quit school at the end of the
eighth grade and our children stay with us."

VI The Abolition of "Mass Play"

Thus the dark narrow passage-way from the elementary to the higher
schools is being widened, lighted, paved and sign-posted. In some school
systems it has disappeared altogether, leaving the promotion from the
eighth year to the first year high school as easy as the step from the
seventh to the eighth grade. After the children have reached the high
school, however, the task is only begun. First they must be
individualized, second socialized, and third taught.

"The trouble with the girls," complained Wm. McAndrew, in discussing his
four thousand Washington Irvingites, "is that they have always been
taught mass play. Take singing, for instance. A class started off will
sing beautifully all together, but get one girl on her feet and she is
afraid to utter a note. The grade instruction has taught them group
acting and group thinking. I step into a class of Freshmen with a 'Good
morning, girls'.

"'Good morning,' they chorus.

"'Are you glad to see me, girls?'

"'Yes sir,' again in chorus.

"'Do you wished I was hanged?'

"'Yes sir,' generally,--

"'Oh, no sir,' cries one girl who has begun to cerebrate. The idea
catches all over the class, and again the chorus comes,--

"'Oh, no si