chool exists to assist and prepare children to live.

II. Living involves three kinds of needs, which it is the duty
of the school to understand and interpret.

1. Needs which the child has because he is a physical being.

2. Needs which result from the child's surroundings.

3. Needs which arise in connection with the things which the
child hopes to do in life.

A further analysis of these groups of needs constitutes the subject
matter of the next chapter.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 19: Sacrificing Children, W. E. Chancellor, Journal of
Education, Vol. 77, pp. 564-565 (May 22, 1913).]

CHAPTER III

FITTING SCHOOLS TO CHILDREN

I Child Growth--A Primary Factor in Child Life

In the first place children have certain needs because in common with
many other living creatures they develop through spontaneous,
self-expressive activity. The growth of children is a growth in body, in
mind and in soul.

During the first six years of life the bodies of children grow rapidly,
and during these years we wisely make no attempt to train their minds.
From six to twelve or thirteen body growth is slower, the mind is having
its turn at development, and during these years the children start to
school.

Then, at twelve or thirteen or fourteen, differing with different races
and different individuals, all normal children enter the fairyland of
adolescence. Life takes on new meanings, human relationships are closer,
great currents of feeling run deep and strong through the child's being,
because there is coming into his life one of the most wonderful of human
experiences--the dawning of sex consciousness.

This period of sex awakening produces a profound change in the lives of
boys, but it works an even greater transformation in the lives of girls.
For both sexes it is a time of rapid physical growth and of severe
mental and spiritual strain. It is a time when the energies of the body
are so entirely devoted to the development of sex functions that great
mental stress should above all things be avoided, yet it is at this
very time--think of it!--when we send our boys and girls to high school,
and force them to spend a great part of their waking hours in severe
intellectual efforts.

II Children Need Health First

Had we set out with the deliberate intention of torturing our children
we could have devised no better method. If we had applied ourselves to
physiology, found out the t