recious to spend in doing over again what children were sure to do
any way. In some social conditions, this reason has weight. In pioneer
times, for example, outside occupations gave a definite and valuable
intellectual and moral training. Books and everything concerned with
them were, on the other hand, rare and difficult of access; they were
the only means of outlet from a narrow and crude environment. Wherever
such conditions obtain, much may be said in favor of concentrating
school activity upon books. The situation is very different, however,
in most communities to-day. The kinds of work in which the young
can engage, especially in cities, are largely anti-educational. That
prevention of child labor is a social duty is evidence on this point.
On the other hand, printed matter has been so cheapened and is in such
universal circulation, and all the opportunities of intellectual culture
have been so multiplied, that the older type of book work is far from
having the force it used to possess.

But it must not be forgotten that an educational result is a by-product
of play and work in most out-of-school conditions. It is incidental,
not primary. Consequently the educative growth secured is more or less
accidental. Much work shares in the defects of existing industrial
society--defects next to fatal to right development. Play tends to
reproduce and affirm the crudities, as well as the excellencies, of
surrounding adult life. It is the business of the school to set up an
environment in which play and work shall be conducted with reference to
facilitating desirable mental and moral growth. It is not enough just
to introduce plays and games, hand work and manual exercises. Everything
depends upon the way in which they are employed.

2. Available Occupations. A bare catalogue of the list of activities
which have already found their way into schools indicates what a rich
field is at hand. There is work with paper, cardboard, wood, leather,
cloth, yarns, clay and sand, and the metals, with and without tools.
Processes employed are folding, cutting, pricking, measuring, molding,
modeling, pattern-making, heating and cooling, and the operations
characteristic of such tools as the hammer, saw, file, etc. Outdoor
excursions, gardening, cooking, sewing, printing, book-binding, weaving,
painting, drawing, singing, dramatization, story-telling, reading and
writing as active pursuits with social aims (not as mere exercises for
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