school. Get them into the athletic clubs, swimming and dancing may be easy for them, there they may excel. The glee club may make a special appeal to the child with the voice but not much brains. The girl who cannot get more than fifty per cent of her class work done may be one hundred per cent in ability to manage the class and be the housekeeper if her teacher is off duty for an hour or a day. She may be able to learn the most intricate steps of a folk dance and dance with perfect childish abandon although she can never attain to the "A" record that is demanded in the regular class work.

These are the children all through the grades, that the deficient card with its personal history written upon it, brings out into the light. The card calling for a report of this kind has been instrumental in turning the attention of the teacher to the failures in her class and a consequent search for weakness and their causes, thus making the selection of the children for special classes a comparatively easy matter.

The chief thing in all this selection of children for special classes is to keep the individual child from feeling the hurt of its own weakness until it has got safely past the parting of the ways, one of which leads to delinquency and suffering, and the other to plodding contentment in doing something well, no matter how lowly the work may be, and to eventually earning its own living. When we can educate these weak little ones with the all-sidedness of the education that we plan for children at large, mental, moral, and physical, and to that add the spiritual gift of happy contentment with their lot in life limited though it may be; we have done a great thing for these children of the shadow.

Until recent years we felt as if our work as teachers was well done if after a term of painstaking work we passed to the next grade seventy-five per cent, eighty per cent, ninety per cent of our pupils. We patted ourselves on the back and closed our door at the end of the year feeling that there was nothing more required of us.

I am so thankful that there has come in these later days, the new thoughtfulness, not for the successful eighty per cent passed but for the unsuccessful remnant. The new thought for these is not to make them part of the successful eighty per cent, but to make one hundred per cent of them successful along quite different lines. In other words, instead of trying to fit them with shoes never made for their feet, we make shoes for them that will be their own, quite different in pattern and style from the ordinary child's shoes, but, oh, so comfortable and easy to walk along the highway of life.

Two words that we hear on every side nowadays are "thrift” and “preparedness." They have a great civic meaning. We are all considering them. They should mean much to us in our work as teachers. Thrift. in the care of our classes should prevent waste of time, energy, and money by having unfortunate children repeat grades because they are misfits. It is our duty to make them fit well into a new scheme different from the traditional program that has treated all children alike.

Preparedness for the teacher should mean not only the preparing of the normal children to take their place in life but the study of these weaklings so that they may be fitted for some sort of work in the community. For those, fortunately few, who are so feeble-minded that they can never care for themselves, institutions should be provided that will keep them comfortable and happy as far as their condition will permit, and will prevent them from being a menace to society either today or in the future.

I shall close my part of this discussion with the words of one who recognized the true place and duty of the teacher when he said:

Oh! ye teachers! yours the task
Noblest that noble minds can ask.
Of you the growing mind demands
The patient care, the guiding hands,
Through all the mists of morn;
And knowing well the future's need,
Your prescient wisdom sows the seed,
To flower in years unborn.

To the teachers we must assign the task of giving patient care and the guiding hand with double measure to these weaker ones among the children entrusted to them.

MARGARET KNOX,

Principal of Public School 15, Manhattan.

WINDY NIGHTS

Whenever the moon and stars are set,

Whenever the wind is high,

All night long in the dark and wet,

A man goes riding by.

Late in the night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?

Whenever the trees are crying aloud,
And ships are tossed at sea,
By on the highway, low and loud,

By at the gallop goes he.

By at the gallop he goes, and then
By he comes back at the gallop again.

ROBERT L. STEVENSON.

SUBJECT MATTER AND METHODS

ARITHMETIC FOR HIGH GRADE BOYS

To teach multiplication table of 9 through 6×9.

To learn the multiplication table of 9 in order to play store.

To increase vitality of the children of the class by correction of posture.

To win the "growing tall" contest.

Illustrative Material:

Charts, two tables, two measures, two blocks, a yardstick, a recording stick and a blackboard.

Child lies supine upon table; feet are held at end of table by helpers. At command the child raises arms over head and rests; length of child from feet to head or from feet to finger tips is taken. Then urge to stretch and take final length to head or finger tips or both.

How often did we decide it would be necessary to play this game? In school? At home? Why?

(Helpers prepare tables.)

What must we do before we can start our
game? Why?
Introduction:

a. Formation
b. Breathing
c. Arm exercise
d. Leg exercise
e. Rest

Take places for the contest.

Who won this contest?

NOTICES

MARY H. LEECH,

P. S. 35, Manhattan.

Dr. George H. Kirby, Director of Clinical Psychiatry, of the Manhattan State Hospital, Ward's Island, will hold a clinic in psychopathology at New York University during the coming year on Mondays at four.

The object of this course is to lay the foundation for understanding some of the difficulties of adaptation shown by school children in whom no essential underlying mental defect is demonstrable. Conduct disorders, unusual moods, nervousness, peculiarities of mental make-up and various psychopathic traits will be viewed as evidence of a disharmonious development of the personality which may seriously interfere with the child's adaptability and capacity to acquire knowledge. The common neuroses and psychoses of childhood will be studied. Case reports will include the facts of heredity, social history, type of mental make-up, special disturbing situations, and the physical and mental examinations. The general principles of management and treatment will be considered in connection with the cases presented. The data of modern psychiatry will be used to illustrate the chief problems of mental hygiene and to show the opportunities for constructive work in this field during childhood.

A small experimental school called Laboratory School will soon be opened at 157 E. 72nd St. as an extension of the work of the Social Research Department of the Neurological Institute. This school will receive as pupils about ten children under ten years of age who for one cause or another have been failing to progress in school but who, so far as can be ascertained, test normal mentally. The tuition is free and the children will be kept through the school day. Miss Eleanor H. Johnson will act as executive officer.