up in their seats as a matter of habit, and it did not seem
to hurt them seriously to do so. And everywhere they were working like
beavers at one task or another, or attending with all their eyes and
ears to a recitation.

Now it seemed to me that this school was operated with a minimum of
waste or loss. Every item of energy that the pupils possessed was being
given to some educative activity. Nothing was lost by conflict between
pupil and teacher. Nothing was lost by bursts of anger or by fits of
depression. These sources of waste had been eliminated so far as I could
determine. The pupils could read well and write well and cipher
accurately. They even took a keen delight in the drills. And I found
that this phase of their work was enlightened by the modern content that
had been introduced. In their handwork and manual training they could
see that arithmetic was useful,--that it had something to do with the
great big buzzing life of the outer world. They learned that spelling
was useful in writing,--that it was not something that began and ended
within the covers of the spelling book, but that it had a real and vital
relation to other things that they found to be important. They had their
dramatic exercises in which they and their fellows, and, on occasions,
their parents, took a keen delight, and they were glad to afford them
pleasure and to receive congratulations at the close. And yet they found
that, in order to do these things well, they must read and study and
drill on speaking. They liked to have their drawings inspected and
praised at the school exhibitions, but they soon found that good drawing
and painting and designing were strictly conditioned by a mastery of
technique, and they wished to master technique in order to win these
rewards.

Now what was the secret of the efficiency of this school? Not merely the
fact that it had introduced certain types of content such as drawing,
manual training, domestic science, dramatization, story work,--but also
that it had not lost sight of the fundamental purpose of elementary
education, but had so organized all of its studies that each played into
the hands of the others, and that everything that was done had some
definite and tangible relation to everything else. The manual training
exercises and the mechanical drawing were exercises in arithmetic, but,
let me remind you, there were other lessons, and formal lessons, in
arithmetic as well. But the one exercise enligh