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VALUE OF ELEMENTARY SCHOOL FOR THE SOCIAL VIRTUES. 283 
standpoint. And the tone and atmosphere around a bright, intelligent, 
kind-hearted woman foster the nascent civic virtues. 
If IT am asked what school exercises are most valuable to educate for 
sitizenship, I fear I should say that it is exercises out of school which are 
the best. Miss Wheelock, of New York, spoke this week at the Woman’s 
Building about the civilizing and the humanizing effect of giving play- 
grounds to the children of the city slums as well as kindergarten training 
:0 them. I believe that it is in the games which children play that they 
learn most thoroughly the principles of justice and to yield to public 
opinion. All games have rules ; many games have a referce, in case of alleged 
infractions of rules. ¢ Fair play” is the earliest conception of justice 
which enters into the mind of a child. And there are some good rules with 
segard to games which are not kept up in the great game of life, when 
‘he stakes are so much heavier. If a boy is a much better runner than his 
fellows, he is handicapped in the competition for victory in a race. In 
life, the man who has won the prize starts so many more yards ahead, 
instead of so many yards behind, for the next contest. 
But the scorn which is poured out on the boy who takes an unfair 
advantage in order to defeat others is the expression of a healthy and 
just public opinion, and I should like to see it retain its vigor and its 
efficacy all through life. 
Still, no doubt, there are school exercises which promote education for 
citizenship at present in use, and others might be devised. The most 
important at present are music, in the shape of school songs, and drill 
and discipline. School singing is social ; each young voice lends its trib- 
ate, and diferent voices are allotted to part singing. The voice of each 
is subordinated to the general effect. Drill is also helpful to the social 
jevelopment. Step for step with regularity, without jostling or confu- 
sion, each takes his place and keeps it. These things are done uncon- 
sciously, as a matter of course ; but a teacher who wants to train citizens 
could show the social equality and the social value of the school singing 
and the school drill. Discipline saves much time and much tear and wear 
to teachers and to pupils, and no school prospers without its aid. But 
when discipline becomes the master and not the servant of true education, 
Jne sees it in the tone of the school. There is a want of elasticity and of 
spontaneity. 
The discipline ought to be such that the consensus of all the best 
pupils is on the side of law and order. And is not this the best training 
tor citizenship in a free country ? The days of the autocratic schoolmaster 
are over, even in countries which we consider to be somewhat despoti- 
cally governed. And it seems to me to be the death-knell to absolutism 
when future citizens have their rights respected by the teachers. They are 
likely to demand them from the monarch. 
Good manners are the outward and visible expression of good morals.