of people live in a country, what they work at, what they
eat, and how they live in their homes and their schools, what weather
they have, and what they wear, how they travel and speak and
read,--these are more vital questions to the child than the names and
locations of unimportant streams, towns, capes, and bays. For they are
the things that touch his own experience, and hence appeal to his
interest. Only as geography is given this social background, and
concerns itself with the earth as related to social activities, can it
fulfill its function in the elementary school."[4]

_Hygiene and health._ Since health is at the basis of all success and
happiness, nothing can be more important in the education of the child
than the subject of practical hygiene. It has been the custom in our
schools until recently, however, to give the child a difficult and
uninteresting text book dealing with physiology and anatomy, but
containing almost nothing on hygiene and the laws of health.

Not only should the course in physiology emphasize the laws of hygiene,
but this hygiene should in part have particular bearing on right living
under the conditions imposed by the farm. Food, its variety,
adaptability, and preparation; clothing for the different seasons; work,
recreation, and play; care of the eyes and teeth; bathing; the
ventilation of the home, and especially of sleeping-rooms; the effects
of tobacco and cigarettes in checking growth and reducing efficiency;
the more simple and obvious facts bearing on the relation of bacteria to
the growth, preparation, and spoiling of foods; the means to be taken to
prevent bacterial contagion of diseases,--these are some of the
practical matters that every child should know as a result of his study
of physiology and hygiene.

But we must go one step further still. It is not enough to teach these
things as matters of abstract theory or truth. Plenty of people know
better hygiene than they are practicing. The subject must be presented
so concretely and effectively and be supported by such incentives that
it will actually lead to better habits of living--that it will _result
in higher physical efficiency_.

_Agriculture._ Agriculture is of course preeminently a subject for the
rural school. Not only is it of immediate and direct practical
importance, but it is coming to be looked upon as so useful a cultural
study that it is being introduced into many city schools.

It has been objected that ag