n desperation to the
superintendent with a plan for a revolution in the organization of my
school, a revolution that I was sure would meet the needs of the
community and one upon which I was willing to stake my reputation if I
had any."

At this point it is worth remembering, parenthetically, that Cincinnati
school men have a habit of going about their school problems in very
much that spirit, beginning by sizing up the needs of the community,
continuing by becoming imbued with an idea of the community needs and
ending by presenting this idea to the school authorities and
getting--within bounds--carte blanche to make their schools serve the
locality in which they are situated.

This was Mr. Voorhes's experience. He was told to go ahead and make
good--a permission of which he availed himself in an astoundingly short
space of time by introducing a system of applied education, aimed to
meet the needs of the children who attended the Oyler School.

"There is a peculiar situation," said Mr. Dyer, "and it needs peculiar
handling. You have only one problem to solve--that of the west end. Go
ahead!" Mr. Voorhes did go ahead with a plan under which all children in
the sixth and seventh grades were given three periods a week in
laboratories and shops. Subnormal pupils in the third, fourth and fifth
grades were to have four and one-half hours (one school day) for applied
work each week. In order to give special help to backward pupils they
were sent in small groups to the seventh and eighth grade teachers while
their classes were doing applied work. Below-grade children go to the
eighth grade teacher for special work in arithmetic and geography, and
the seventh grade teacher for English and history. In this way the
backward children from the lower grades have special training by the
best equipped teachers in the school.

The eighth grade pupils give one-fifth of their time to applied work.
During the year the boys have, in addition to the shop-work, twenty
lessons in preparing and cooking plain, substantial meals. To make this
"siss" work palatable to the sterner sex much of it takes the form of
instruction in camp life--cooking in tin cans and other handy home-made
devices. In a community where boys have always been trained to regard
home work as menial, but where the absence of servants makes a "lift"
from the husband or brother such a Godsend to the wife at odd times, the
value of giving grade boys a taste for cooking can h