p she will be able to read and write and add up
a column of figures correctly and with ease. This she seems not to be
able to do under present conditions. And there are other things, even
more important than the "three R's," which she should be taught. She
should be taught how to work--how to work _intelligently_. She should be
trained young in the fundamental race activities, in the natural human
instinct for making something with the hands, or of doing something with
the hands, and of taking an infinite pleasure in making it perfect, in
doing it well.

I have no technical knowledge of pedagogics; I must admit that. My
criticism of the public-school system I base entirely upon the results
as I have seen them in the workshops, the factories, and the store in
which I worked. During this period I had opportunity for meeting many
hundreds of girls and for becoming more or less acquainted with them
all. Now, of all these I have not yet discovered one who had not at some
time in her earlier childhood or girlhood attended a public school.
Usually the girl had had at least five years' continuous schooling, but
often it was much more. But, great or small as the period of her tuition
had been, I never met one whose knowledge of the simplest rudiments of
learning was confident and precise. Spelling, geography, grammar,
arithmetic, were never, with them, positive knowledge, but rather
matters of chance and guess. Even the brightest girls showed a woeful
ignorance of the "three R's." In only one thing did I find them
universally well taught, and that was in handwriting. However badly
spelled and ungrammatical their written language might be, it was
invariably neatly and legibly--often beautifully--executed. But if these
girls, these workmates of mine, learned to write clear and beautiful
hands, why were they not able also to learn how to spell, why were they
not able to learn the principles of grammar and the elementary knowledge
of arithmetic as far at least as long division? That they did not have
sufficient "apperceiving basis" I cannot believe, for they were
generally bright and clever.

It is true that the public schools are already teaching manual training,
and that kindergartens have enormously increased lately. These facts I
know very well. I also know how much ignorance and senseless prejudice
the pioneers of these educational reforms have had to overcome in the
introduction of the newer and better methods. The point I wi