er conditions and is
conditioned by the health of the other.

Moreover, at the present time, it is all the more necessary to insist
upon the need for the systematic care of the physical culture of the
child, since in many cases the conditions under which the children of
the poor live in our great towns are most prejudicial to the full and
free development of the organs of the body. The narrow, overbuilt
streets in the poorer parts of our towns, the overcrowding of the people
in tenements, the unhygienic conditions under which the vast majority of
our very poor live and sleep, are all active forces in preventing the
full and free development of the physical powers of the child. Thus the
purely educational problem of how best to promote the physical health
and development of the child by the systematic exercises of the school
is involved in the much larger and more important social problem of how
to better the conditions under which the very poor live. The agencies of
the school can do little permanently to improve the physique of the
children until, concurrently with the school, society endeavours to
improve the social conditions under which the poorest of the population
of our great cities herd together. For a similar reason much of the
endeavour of the school to found and establish in the child's mind
interests of social worth is counteracted by the evil influence of its
home and social environment. If the physical, economic, and ethical
efficiency of the children of the slums is ever to be secured, if we are
ever to attain a permanent result, then concurrently with the creation
of new and higher social interests must go hand in hand changes in the
social environment of the child. Mere betterment of the physical
conditions under which our slum population live is of no avail unless at
the same time we have a corresponding change in the slum mind by the
rise and prevalence of a higher ideal of the physical and material
conditions under which their lives ought to be spent.

For experience has shown in many cases that the mere betterment of the
material conditions under which the poor live without any corresponding
change of ideals soon results in the re-creation of the miserable
conditions which formerly prevailed. On the other hand, the mere
instilling of new ideals into the minds of the rising generation will
effect little, if during the greater part of the school period and
altogether afterwards we leave the child to