ure are often firmly
implanted and in a fair way to become masters of the young life. An
elaborate plan for the little child's training would probably be
abandoned even if undertaken, since elaborate plans involve endless
work. If, however, we attempt no more than I have outlined in this
chapter, we have some reasonable chance of success. Given good health,
with regular bodily habits, as a physical foundation, the child will
have had much done for him if we have begun to build the habits of
sympathy, self-control, industry, and service which will purify and
sweeten the family relations of later years and make the one-time
child worthy himself to undertake the important task of home building.

It is naturally a matter for regret that the teacher into whose hands
the child comes first at school usually knows so little of the home
training he has had or failed to have. Children whose parents have
made little or no attempt to teach these fundamental qualities which
we have had under discussion are sometimes forever handicapped unless
the teacher can supply the deficiency. Children who have made a good
beginning may lose much of what they have been taught unless the
teacher recognizes and holds them to the ideal. The kindergarten or
primary teacher needs to know the homes of her pupils; and the time is
not far distant when the school will recognize the home as after all
the first grade in school life. Then mothers will receive the
inspiration of contact with the teachers and their ideals, not alone
when their children reach school age, but from the time the first
child arrives in the home. The Sunday school has its "cradle roll."
The day school may emulate its example.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 5: Cabot, _What Men Live By_.]

CHAPTER VII

TEACHING THE MECHANICS OF HOUSEKEEPING

Going to school marks an epoch in every child's life. Hitherto,
however wide or narrow the child's contact with the world has been,
the mother has been, at least nominally and in most cases actually,
the controlling power. Now she gives her child over for an
increasingly large part of every day to outside influence.

More and more we are coming to see that the evolution of a successful
homemaker requires that the school as well as the home keep the
homemaking ideal before it. And so the best schools of the country are
doing. The greatest needs of the little girl's early school days would
seem to be a definite understanding between teac