The work of the highly skilled student, or the student with a high congenital motor endowment, or the one who has had exceptional opportunities for the use of tools outside of school, should not be made the standard of excellence for an entire class. Artificial accuracy may be compelled by sheer force and the individual attention of the teacher, but it would be foreign to the natural abilities, needs or desires of a child of the elementary school age. Such teaching would be about the same type of pedagogy that it would be to require a fifth grade child to conjugate a Greek verb; he may learn to do it, so may a parrot, but it would have no functional value in his life activities. Rarely would a similar degree of accuracy be applied in doing a piece of work away from the teacher's influence. until the student has reached an age when his co-ordinations of mind and muscle, his desires and the needs of his life make it the natural thing for him to apply the highest possible degree of accuracy as a matter of course.

The endeavor and time spent by a child of the grade schools to attain that degree of accuracy which would be natural for a high school student can only result in loss of interest, thus minimizing the possibility of accomplishing the best results, as interest of grade school children can be maintained only by keeping them at work upon projects which appeal to them as being worth while. The degree of accuracy attained at this time is of less importance than the degree of interest, voluntary thought and endeavor applied to the work in hand.

For many years educational methods in the cities have gradually been adapted to the ideal of learning by doing; until recently rural pedagogical methods have in the majority of cases been based upon memory culture, a formidable array of abstract and unrelated facts gave the students many superficial impressions without opportunities for expressing them or for demonstrating their practical value in life. No student can acquire a grasp upon a subject or be conscious of its maximum value until it has passed from an abstract idea into some form capable of concrete expression.

Pupils of the rural school of today will be men and women of tomorrow; they will control many of the mining, forestry, agricultural and industrial interests. By implanting in their impressionable minds sentiments favorable to the conservation of the natural resources of the state and nation, and a conception of their value to future national prosperity, a teacher may make such an impression upon the community in which she is locted that her work will be remembered long after she has passed on.

MOONLIGHT SCHOOLS

From red brush uplands, thatched with sassafras,
And fields of broom-sage comes a motley class
Of uncouth young and wizened old, in rough,
Clay-spattered brogans, jeans and cotton stuff,
Seeking the Moonlight School. And prompt are they
To seize the propitious eve, whom chary day
Denied the golden hour. Patient they stand
With primer gripped in hoe-wise, horny hand,
Learning to read; and some at desks too small
Piece out their names in piteous, painful scrawl.
-To sign one's name achievement were indeed,
And Holy Book or letter learn to read.

When Life, insatiate Shylock, shall no more
Exact his pound of flesh at my heart's core,
O God! admit me to Thy Moonlight School—
Ungainly me, the broken, aged fool

Of Circumstance, who yearned withal to know;
Enroll me. Teach my unskilled hand to go

Smooth across Time's white page, where I had thought
To set my name by day, yet toiled untaught.
Teach me to read Thy mystic book of Truth
Whose symbolism tortured all my youth.
-The obscure complexities of Now and Here,

Shall not Thy moonlight teaching make them clear?

LENA MOBEE.

W. D. ARMENTROUT, DIRECTOR OF TRAINING SCHOOL,
COLORADO STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE,

M

WM÷UCH attention is being lavished upon the various plans for introducing sex education as a definite subject in the curricula of our elementary and high schools. However, insufficient thought has been given to the necessity of similar education in the home. The writer is opposed to direct sex instruction in the public schools as they are now constituted, and will present three reasons for this opposition. The great objection to sex teaching in the schools is the grave danger of isolating it from the rest of the life of the youth. Already one of the strongest criticisms of our public schools is that a vast amount of the subject matter taught has no direct relation to the child's life. The average boy or girl lives two distinct lives: one in school, and the other out. O'Shea has described a typical recitation as a method of sitting still and memorizing definitions, mechanically learning fundamental operations and applying them to solutions entirely remote from daily life. Since much of the subject matter is taught thus at the present time, there is no reason to believe that teachers would change their methods in teaching sex hygiene, if it were introduced in our schools.

The danger in isolating this subject would be that too much attention would be concentrated on the sexual life. "Because the sexual impulses are so strong, the corrective effort must be extended through the emotional and motor centers. Sexual impulses must come under the control of social feelings, of devotion, chivalry, and charity; and then only will they be deprived of their blind natural power and be set in place with the higher requirements of social culture." The sex impulse is easily excited by many and constantly operating conditions. At the faintest suggestion it is stirred into action. Instruction must be of such a nature that it will not in itself be a suggestion.

Neither ethical nor hygienic instruction rightly influences conduct unless the ideas are acquired in such a vital way and take such a firm grip that they become moving ideas and motive forces. There is nothing in the nature of ideas about purity and goodness that automatically transmutes such ideas into good conduct of character. "The commonest error is to expect people to become efficient and decent by some mysterious influences from lessons, or sermons, or good results, or what not. We forget that character means the connection between mental states and acts, and that the only way to have connections is to make them."

The purpose of teaching civics is citizenship; but citizenship will never be developed as long as civics is a mere formal study of government. The mechanical learning of definitions will never create a genuine love of country. So we teach, and have taught, physiology and hygiene for many years; and yet in every schoolroom will be found spinal curvatures, flat chests, drooping shoulders, flat feet, defective teeth, mouth breathers, and every defect which physiology and hygiene show how to correct. Formalism permeates most of the subjects as now taught in our elementary and high schools, and formalism would certainly prove disastrous in the study of sex.

So the three objections to sex education in the curricula of our schools are these: it would be isolated from the real life of the child; too much attention would be concentrated upon sex; and with our present methods of instruction, we have no assurance that the ideas received from sex teaching would be carried over into the conduct and behavior of the child.

Let us look at the other phase of our problem, sex education in the home. Instruction in the school is not necessary when we have in the home parents who tell the truth to their children, at the right time and in the right way. The real problem of sex education is to show fathers and mothers the great opportunity and duty they have in imparting sex knowledge and information to their children.

In the home, sex instruction can be given unobtrusively on the proper occasions, and almost as a matter of course; and can be

suited to the needs of the individual child and his stage of development. There is a great difference in children. They vary in their willingness to follow instruction, in judgment, and in prudence; and they vary in the extent to which they are susceptible to temptation. Therefore, the instruction must be individual; and it is impossible under our present school system for the teacher to give much time to individual teaching. Then, too, the teacher when giving sex instruction always works under the big disadvantage of having to create occasions; whereas the parent finds his best opportunities in answering questions or explaining problems as they naturally arise.

Another great advantage the parent has as a teacher, is the fact that the child will probably make a confidant of him, or her, and not go elsewhere for information on these subjects. The benefit of this confidential relation between parent and child cannot be overestimated.

There are at least three types of parents neglecting the important duty of imparting sex information to their children. Some parents are silent because they recognize no immediate need for this instruction. Others, with a false sense of modesty, feel a delicate hesitancy in speaking of such things to their children. The third class fail to teach their children because of their own sheer ignorance. So, before sex education can really begin, parents must be better informed on sex hygiene and brought to see their children's need of instruction. Ignorant parents must be educated, false modesty overcome, and intelligent parents, who recognize their, duty commended.

It will be a safer and saner policy to equip parents with the necessary knowledge and understanding, rather than the public school teacher. This individual, already overloaded, and with a mere smattering of knowledge for the purpose of sex teaching, can hardly be expected to be just the right instructor. The teaching of sex problems calls for a special fitness in temperament and understanding, as well as for a real sympathy with the pupil. What teachers, other than fathers and mothers, have these qualifications so naturally bestowed upon them!