use in the service of other pursuits, sketching and photography also
have many votaries for their own sake, though the former is usually
more dependent on encouragement from above. Then there is gardening.
The tenure of a plot of ground is a joy to many children; and in the
opinion of the writer, some experience, and some experimental work,
in the growing of the most necessary food plants, as well as flowers,
should form part of the education of all at a certain stage, whether
in school time or in free time. For some, where the conditions are
favourable, this can be extended to the care of fruit-trees, bees,
poultry, and to some kinds of farm-work. The needs of war-time have
brought something of this into many schools, to the real gain of
education, now and later, if it can be retained, at least as a
possibility of choice. So also with the care of the playing fields:
the more that the work needed for a game is thrown upon the players
themselves, the more does it contribute to education. And so too with
constructive work of any kind that, with some help of suggestion or
direction, is within the compass even of comparatively unskilled
labour. A lengthy list could be given of things accomplished in this
way, with an educational value all the greater for their practical
purpose, from Ruskin's famous road down to the last field levelled and
pavilion built or shed put up, by voluntary effort and in time found
by the workers without encroaching on regular school work. And lastly,
an outdoor occupation for free time which, in the earlier days of
school life, we shall do well to encourage--both for its own value and
the manifold interests that it encourages and lessons that it teaches,
and also for its bearing on questions of national service that will
remain to be answered after the war--is the wide range of activities
comprised in scouting, undoubtedly one of the chief educational
advances of our time. Whatever differences of views there may be on
the wider questions of military service for national defence, and of
making military training a specific part of education, few can deny
that, with a view to national service of _some_ kind, the use made by
Sir Robert Baden-Powell of instincts natural to all at a particular
stage of growth, by an organisation which can be kept entirely free
from the failings of militarism, is a development of the utmost
educational, as well as national, value. If a school already develops,
by other