r the maturing girl is the safeguarding of
her health. School demands at this age are likely to be excessive
under existing systems of instruction. In many ways the secondary
school, in which we may assume our adolescent girl to be, merits the
criticism constantly made, that it works its pupils too hard or,
perhaps more accurately, that it works them too long. Nothing but the
closest cooeperation between parents and teachers can afford either of
them the necessary data for working out this problem. It can never be
anything but an individual problem, since girls will always differ
whether school courses do so or not, and adjustment of one to the
other must be made every time the combination is effected. Some
schools content themselves with asking for a record of time spent on
school work at home. Many parents merely acquiesce in the girl's
statement that she does or doesn't have to study to-night, and the
matter rests. Other schools and other parents go into the question
with more or less detail, but usually quite independently of each
other in the investigation. It is only very recently that anything
like adequate knowledge of pupils has begun to be gathered and
recorded to throw light upon the home-study question.

School girls naturally divide into fairly well-defined classes: the
girl who is overanxious or overconscientious about her work, the girl
who intends to comply with rules but has no special anxiety about
results, and the girl who habitually takes chances in evading the
preparation of lessons. How many parents know at all definitely to
which class their girl belongs?

The same girls may be classified again with regard to activities
outside the school. They may help at home much or little or not at
all. They may have absorbing social interests or practically none.
They may be in normal health or may already be nervous wrecks from
causes over which the school has no control.

There is no question about the value of definite information on all of
these points gathered by home and school acting together for the best
understanding of the child. The modern physician keeps a carefully
tabulated record of his patient's history and condition. The school
should do the same thing and should prescribe with due reference to
such record.

It frequently happens, however, that the schoolgirl's health is
menaced less by her hours of school work than by misuse of the
remaining portion of the twenty-four hours. No mother h