int of view we approach the matter.
Only as we interpret school activities with reference to the larger
circle of social activities to which they relate do we find any standard
for judging their moral significance.

The school itself must be a vital social institution to a much greater
extent than obtains at present. I am told that there is a swimming
school in a certain city where youth are taught to swim without going
into the water, being repeatedly drilled in the various movements which
are necessary for swimming. When one of the young men so trained was
asked what he did when he got into the water, he laconically replied,
"Sunk." The story happens to be true; were it not, it would seem to be a
fable made expressly for the purpose of typifying the ethical
relationship of school to society. The school cannot be a preparation
for social life excepting as it reproduces, within itself, typical
conditions of social life. At present it is largely engaged in the
futile task of Sisyphus. It is endeavoring to form habits in children
for use in a social life which, it would almost seem, is carefully and
purposely kept away from vital contact with the child undergoing
training. The only way to prepare for social life is to engage in social
life. To form habits of social usefulness and serviceableness apart from
any direct social need and motive, apart from any existing social
situation, is, to the letter, teaching the child to swim by going
through motions outside of the water. The most indispensable condition
is left out of account, and the results are correspondingly partial.

The much lamented separation in the schools of intellectual and moral
training, of acquiring information and growing in character, is simply
one expression of the failure to conceive and construct the school as a
social institution, having social life and value within itself. Except
so far as the school is an embryonic typical community life, moral
training must be partly pathological and partly formal. Training is
pathological when stress is laid upon correcting wrong-doing instead of
upon forming habits of positive service. Too often the teacher's concern
with the moral life of pupils takes the form of alertness for failures
to conform to school rules and routine. These regulations, judged from
the standpoint of the development of the child at the time, are more or
less conventional and arbitrary. They are rules which have to be made in
order that t