where courses of home economics (nursing, sewing, and cooking) are given to young housewives. I would say of this course that it is the only one in all our public schools that is actually given at the time when it is most appropriate. The attendance on these classes is five hundred.

COMPULSORY CONTINUATION SCHOOLS

Last and most important of ali in matter of numbers and influence is the compulsory continuation school.

Boards of education in Ohio are given permission to establish continuation schools for youths from fourteen to sixteen years of age, who are employed, and, after having established such a school, are given the right to compel attendance. The time required of the youth must not exceed eight hours per week. The Cincinnati board decided on four hours a week.

These pupils are divided into sixth, seventh, and eighth grades. As they are with us but one-half day per week their work must be of such a character that it will completely monopolize their time while in school, and cover as nearly as possible the leisure time outside. The four hours are divided into six periods, with a short recess.

Work for girls.-On the manual side the girls sew in the sixth, cook in the seventh, and make hats in the eighth grade. The girls of the sixth and eighth grades are given a period per day in industrial art of such a nature, for instance, as shirtwaist designs to supplement their work in sewing and hat designs for millinery. The girls are encouraged to note the fit of their own dresses, to bring garments from home which need remodeling, to finish garments cut out in school, to be able to tell longwool cloth from shoddy, and finally to cultivate a taste, not for expensive, showy clothes, but for quiet clothes of honest worth. It may seem a trivial matter to direct the clothing of our young girls, but when we are told plainly that young girls are willing to barter their character for fine clothes and new hats the work does not seem out of place.

The scholastic side is not neglected, yet we cannot hope to cover the whole ground in arithmetic, grammar, geography, and history. We teach only the bare essentials in arithmetic, and there is certainly no great opportunity for close application in any branch. The usual lists of books were sent to these schools and the books were distributed, and very often the principal has been detected hiding such necessary books as algebra and formal grammar.

Work for boys. Our boys are not set at the usual first work of manual training, namely, benchwork (not a particularly engaging work), but are immediately put in charge of a machine, a wood-turning lathe. The wheels go round and boys of the wilful sort cease thinking of themselves, because their attention is compelled by the machine they handle. By introducing the most active element first, their interest is at once secured and is thereafter easily directed to the quieter fields of manual training, such as mechanical drawing and pattern-work.

In the academic work the same principle of elimination and careful selection is followed as stated above in connection with the boys' courses. Every principle in arithmetic and grammar is on trial for its life, and many of the hoary haired have been thrown into the wastebasket.

Parents interested.-More attention is paid to the parents here than in any other school. On many an afternoon they come in "to see my boy or girl at work," and on many an afternoon they listen to the orchestra, the drama enacted by the pupils, the interesting talks, etc., which are given between 4:00 and 5:00 P.M., and then they return home with their sons and daughters, feeling that the world is growing better and that life is more worth while. Our unruly boys and girls (and there are a few that kind treatment and interesting work are not able to curb) simulate good behavior, because if they do not behave in school, their employer will be informed and they will be dropped.

Pupils' interest in the work an important factor.-The age of fourteen to sixteen inclusive is recognized as the rapid development of interest in self and life. There is need for care at this age in respect to the social life, and the reason that the high school in some of its phases is a most bitter disappointment is because of the lack of this social life. At this age the question of what the children learn is not as important as what they get by association, inference, and intuition. These young folks are put at automatic work in the shops. Their employers have learned by long experience that young persons, at this age, do not think-at least not about the interests of their employer or the care of his machinery. Thus they are set to work at machines where the only evidence of brains is found in the inventor. Day after day they do the same thing, the same way, and watch the clock till escaping time comes. Fatigue toxin has poisoned their bodies and their minds. The relief from that toxin is sought in amusement, and the amusement at hand is not of the right

Our course of study seeks, first of all, to interest the pupils in their work; and second, to give them something to think about during the

week. The girls are sewing and drawing and watching hat styles in the windows and on people. The boys go to the public library and read up to be ready for the other fellow in debate.

The employers insisted that we should teach the essentials, and these, in their opinion, were arithmetic and spelling. But when we attempted to teach the good old standard studies in the same old way, we were met with sullen, unresponsive silence. The reason was not hard to find. The principal questioned a class, thirty boys in all, as to why they had stopped school at the end of the fifth grade. Four boys stopped because their parents actually needed them, and twenty-six stopped because they were tired of school. What would you think of the continuation school that had so little pliability as to teach these sullen boys the same way in which the hated school they had just escaped from had done? Need we give any other reason to show why the old-time methods will not do in the continuation school?

Girls and boys go to the bad between the ages of fourteen to sixteen. Of course it may occur after that period, but unrestrained, unbridled youth, at this period, lays the foundation for a life of bitterness. The ideal school would keep children from fourteen to sixteen in school all the time, but since we have not, as yet, ideal laws, we must not let them run unrestrained after fourteen. The employer is too busy, but between the supervisor of the continuation school and the employer there is much useful supervision bestowed upon the youth.

The continuation school for older persons is a comparatively simple problem. These men and women have their fairly fixed habits, and it is not so much the individual that must be taken into account, but his life-work. That is, his trade is his concern and ours too. But in the compulsory continuation school we have the young animal to deal with, and the choice of the young animal's trade. He is vagrant both in body and mind. I will give you a type-not the worst by any means, but a boy taken at random. Here is his record, as taken from the Labor Certificate Office:

K828, WHITTIER SCHOOL, 7TH GRADE, AGE 15

This boy is drifting and I am told the girls are no better. This problem confronts all cities, and after the youths are gathered together, another and more perplexing problem will present itself, as it has to us. These young animals are pining for excitement, interest, sensation, and change. Most of them belong to the class of automatic workers, a most dangerous class to handle. Three ways of teaching were before us: first, to teach as we had always done, trusting to the sense of accomplishment to cause zest for future work; but I believe that no one who has ever faced a continuation school would ever advocate this method; second, to furnish sensational pleasure, to amuse, delight, anything to take their minds off their work, in order to present an antidote for the accumulated fatigue poison-the suggestion of a sociological expert; third, to teach the essential subjects in the most interesting way, to delight the mind and the eye by proper entertainments, and teach somewhat along the line of their work.

We have chosen the third plan and we have not yet repented of it, possibly because we have not tried it long enough. We can make no boast, except that we have succeeded in bringing to the front one more very difficult line of school work.

VIII. VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

MEYER BLOOMFIELD

Director of the Vocation Bureau of Boston

When the Civic Service House, a social settlement in the crowded North End of Boston, invited the late Professor Frank Parsons, in October, 1908, to undertake a work of personally advising with the young men and women who attended its clubs and classes it soon found an outside call for such service to a degree which taxed the strength of the adviser and the resources of the institution.

So thoroughly did Professor Parsons conceive and outline his work, so detailed and even scientific were his methods of consultation, that before very long there literally came to him a country-wide demand for information and personal help. He was spared only long enough to write his Choosing a Vocation, the first modern work on this subject.

After his death, one of Boston's leading merchants and a number of public-spirited men and women decided to organize the work of vocational advising on a scale adequate to the demands which kept increasing. Mrs. Pauline Agassiz Shaw, the founder of the Civic Service House, and the writer, who for ten years had been its director, co-operated in this effort. Later the writer secured a leave of absence from settlement duties in order to direct the development of the new Vocation Bureau.

On May 4, 1909, Mr. Edward A. Filene, as one of the moving spirits of the civic movement known as Boston 1915, received the following letter from the secretary of the Boston School Board:

DEAR SIR: I respectfully call your attention to the following order which was passed by the School Committee at a meeting held yesterday evening.

"Ordered, that the Boston-1915 Committee be requested to secure the co-operation of the Vocation Bureau for the purpose of assisting graduates of the public schools of this city in choosing wisely the most appropriate employment, etc."

On May 12, after a conference in the Boston-1915 office, the Executive Committee of the Vocation Bureau sent the following statement of its plan of co-operation to the School Board: