ney, there, was in a bakeshop
all day at three and a half a week. We got him a job afternoons and
Saturdays that pays him three dollars. That tall fellow will send
himself through high school on the six dollars a week that he gets from
a drug store where he works outside of school hours."

"We aim," added Mr. Spaulding, "to do everything in our power to make it
possible for the boys to come here. If their parents cannot afford to
send them, we find work for them to do outside of school hours."

That is virile work, is it not? And the result? During the past eight
years the number of pupils in the Newton schools who are over fourteen
has increased three times as fast as the number of pupils who are under
fourteen. The school authorities have searched the highways and byways
of the educational world until one-quarter of the school children of
Newton are in the high schools.

V Joining Hands with the Elementary Schools

The same result which is attained informally at Newton is accomplished
more formally by the organization of the junior high schools which have
sprung up in Berkeley and Los Angeles, California; Evansville, Indiana;
Dayton, Ohio, and a number of other progressive educational centers. The
child's school life under this plan is divided into three parts--the
elementary grades (years one to six), the junior high school (years
seven to nine) and the high school proper (years ten to twelve). The
break, if break there must be, between the elementary and the high
school, thus comes at age twelve and at age fifteen, instead of, as
formerly, coming at age fourteen, when the temptation to leave school is
so strong. Then, too, the sharp transition from work by grades to work
by departments is made easier because the junior high school combines
the two, leading the pupil gradually over from the grade method to the
department method.

Though the junior high school has so great a popularity, its work is
eclipsed by the still more revolutionary program of those educators who
advocate the complete abolition of any line between the elementary and
the high school, and the establishment of a public school of twelve
school years. This plan, coupled with promotion by subjects rather than
by grades, replaces the machine method of promotion and the gap between
elementary and high schools by an easy, natural progression adaptable to
the needs of any student, from the end of the kindergarten to the
beginning of the university.