onsibility without oversight, and
today's elders are loath to give and are often incapable of giving
oversight.

But while these circumstances over which, apparently, we have no
control, preclude much of the valuable outdoor work, food has still to
be prepared, dishes need washing, and clothes must be mended, even if
towels and napkins are no longer hemmed by hand. Rooms are still
swept and dusted, beds are made, and chairs and tables put straight.
Has any better means of giving experience ever been devised than these
small, daily tasks which differentiate men from animals? The care of
the fixed habitation, the foresight needed to prepare the things for
the family life in the weeks and months to come, the cooperation of
all the members of the family toward one common end--all tend toward
high _human ideals_. If the wise mother only realized the value to the
child of helping in such portions as are not too heavy, of being a
part of the life, she would let nothing stand in the way of using this
natural means of development. But with foreign domestics whose idea is
to get the various duties over as soon as possible, and whose gift is
not that of teaching, how is the child to grow into the normal ways of
right daily living, unconsciously and effectively?

If the parents continue to throw all the work of education on the
school, then the school must take the best means of fulfilling the
task.

Not only has the home put the burden of education on the school, but
the school has drawn the child away from the home. The school of today
demands much more from him than the school of the early New England
days. It has taken the time that was formerly given to assisting in
the duties of the household; it has taken from the home the interest
and responsibility that were developed through the cooperation in the
family life. School has taken the place of home in the child's
thoughts. In the morning the thought is of reaching school in time,
not of the home duties whose performance could lighten many a mother's
burden.

The school, hurried with a curriculum that is wasteful of time and
energy, lacking correlation in the studies (except in a few schools
that are noted exceptions proving the rule), has little time to relate
its work to the home as the kindergarten does in its morning talk; so
there must come an intermediate step in order that the school may
emphasize the home life and industries, and that a generation may grow
up who