communities face, not by brawn but by brain, not by destruction but by discussion, not by contamination but by coherence.

No more appropriate place to hold such gatherings or continuation schools, designed to train and prepare for more efficient citizenship and growth in human well-being, could be found than our school buildings. The school-house is the one piece of common property of all and therefore the natural club-house of all. Here the teacher is also naturally recognized as the rightful leader, and put at once in a position to lead and teach parents as well as children and to profit by the teaching they can give her in thus meeting on a common level. In the same way parents will teach each other and teach their children as well as be taught by them at such community gatherings. As teachers you owe it, therefore, to the communities you serve and to yourself to foster and extend the movement that was set on foot only a few years ago, known as the social center movement, to open up school buildings and grounds, at other than school hours, to all the people of the community for citizenship training, or for the better preparing to live with and among each other.

On a smaller scale you can be instrumental in the organization and pushing of smaller groups into societies, clubs, or circles. These will be more limited in their range of activities but not less important in the things they do in their more restricted fields. For larger community undertakings these can be successfully federated for united action. I will take your time to enumerate only a few of many that could be mentioned. Others will be suggested to you by conditions in your respective communities. Some one or two of these may be just what you could set into operation in your community with success. You can not do them all; that would be attempting too much.

First, and of no little importance is The Parent-Teachers' Association. In case there is none in your community set about to organize one. Appeal to the parents to give such organization their support on the basis that since they themselves live in the interest of their children and you live because of their children that you and they, being interested in the same thing, should be interested in each other and each other's problems.

Second, organize classes or clubs to take in the older girls who are not in school and the young married women. A part of the work done in such classes or clubs might well be Home Economics work which will help them to be better able to make their own living or to be better

homemakers, but let some of the activities aim especially at giving these people a broader and saner out-look upon life, and something that will help them to bear up more cheerfully under their regular daily routine, thus brightening both their own lives and the lives of those that must live and work with them.

Third, in the spring of the year get the City Council, Commercial Club, and Women's Club behind the movement to let the school boys and girls organize into teams to rid the city of its winter's accumulated waste. Get some of these organizations to finance the preparation of an evening banquet. To add a little extra interest to it let the various teams compete on the basis of doing the best piece of work or completing first. Let the honor team sit at the head of the table, with girls who made the highest grades in the year's work as the hostesses. This will add greatly to the interest of the work to be done.

Fourth, try to get supervised play organized for the summer. Here you have the assistance of the provision made by the Thirty-sixth General Assembly, which empowers cities or school boards to provide supervised playgrounds.

Fifth, encourage vacant lot cultivation, Boys' and Girls' Clubs, contests of every kind that make for clean boyhood and girlhood, and later manhood and womanhood.

Children as well as grown-ups like to feel that they have really done something and that it has been recognized; for this reason put these things on a constructive contest basis; get the business men and other organizations to offer prizes, and award the highest honor to the highest and greatest accomplishment. Recognize the innate fact in human nature that for the normal individual, whether child or adult, the ideal of life includes something to be and something to do. Also recognize the fact that the purpose of life is to be happy. Make it easy for the children to lead themselves into being something, doing something and being happy, the stepping stones to honorable citizenship and the highest well-being.

For the benefit of those who are trying or who expect to try something along this line permit me to call your attention to a few things to be remembered which may help some of you not to give up in despair.

1. There are three steps which lead to the final level of achievement in this line of work as in many other lines of work. These three steps are-talk, sentiment, and action. Between the first and second steps

there will always be much talk that falls upon ears that hear not, and as a consequence we have here a great horizontal leakage from the ranks. Between the second and third steps there will always flow a very swift current of the "I think the thing is all right but I will let the other fellow push it," which will result in the second great horizontal leakage. If, therefore, you are to get some action you must expect to have first invested large amounts of talk in order to create enough sentiment so that ample allowance may also be made for the second great leakage, that is certain to occur. There is no better place to turn loose the talk that is to manufacture this sentiment than at the social center and your various gatherings.

2. You must also be prepared to face the fact that novelty will attract the curious as well as the interested. Start something new and many will come only to see and fewer, perhaps, to help. Those who come merely to see may not put in their appearance at the second meeting. Here remember that the success of anything is always to be determined by taking into consideration both its characteristics, quantity and quality. Twelve persons who have come to help are worth many more than twelve times twelve who have come merely to see. Few machines do their best work until the paint is worn off of at least some of the parts. Finally, when you think that you have taken all things into consideration you will probably still have some skidding on the road to success, but as the servant is worthy of his hire, so here, the world offers you as pay, "honor, position, fame, a useful life and a deathless name," things highly prized but never awarded before they are earned.

COSTUME APPRECIATION

MARY HENLEIGH BROWN AND LUCY D. TAYLOR

To make simple, genuine, aesthetic pleasure a coveted possibility to the vast number of people who, because they have neither desire nor power to do creative work, believe that they are not concerned with art, is of the utmost importance. On the discrimination and taste of the common people hang, not only added sources of individual happiness, but also the quality and vitality of our national art. The art that is rooted in common things, that is an expression of the thoughts, feelings, and desires of common life, is the art that lives, is the red blood art that finds a response in succeeding generations.

Comparatively few people will make the designs that we use in our every day surroundings; few have the type of imagination and the inclination to devote themselves to the rigorous training required to make such creation possible. But the lack of this creative impulse does not in any sense mean a lack of aesthetic interest. There are infinite possibilities for pleasure for those who like to surround themselves with beauty, even though they never touch pencil or brush to make a design. The liking, the sensitiveness to impression, may be strong; fostering and cultivating may bring it to the point of culture.

If the early crude interest in color and ornament is encouraged, and youth is taught to use them discreetly without being forced to undesired production, the unfortunate condition of self consciousness which expresses itself with more or less hypocrisy in the statement, "I don't know anything about art, but I know what I like," may be avoided and for it substituted an honest attitude of frank enjoyment which fits the training and opportunities. Better honestly to like the gaudy car poster which does tell its story and is a good advertisement, to have a real opinion about it, than to be embarrassed by what someone else will think of your opinion. The honest liking for bad design is a basis on which later refinement may be built, for it is an honestly felt reaction. The hypocritical attitude recognizes no basis of genuine feeling and leads nowhere. False standards lead to insincerity instead of to wholesome reactions.

Art education has two perfectly distinct functions. One is to train creators of beauty, the other is to train appreciators and users of beautiful products. In our schools, we are concerned primarily with the education of the appreciators, for the training of the creators is the train

ing of specialists and naturally follows the former work; it is carried further, intensified, and given mature thought and direction.

This field of appreciation of beauty in common things is one of absorbing interest. Practical, sensible direction in selection of furniture and wall hangings, of costume and its ornamentation provide problems of unbelievable vitality and interest. The users of beauty need practical training in color and design that will give them power to select the color and pattern of the paper for a speical room, to choose the drapery that will soften the window frame without cutting off too much light or destroying the structural effect of the casing, and to provide the color accent that will best serve to make a unit of the whole interior. They need training that will help them in choosing furniture that is beautiful as well as strong and comfortable, and in arranging such accessories as lamps and bric-a-brac with an understanding of the need of unity and repose.

Such work can only be successful when the teaching methods are changed from those that fit the maker of designs to those that fit the selector of designs. Studio methods of teaching have no place in this selective process. Real materials must be seen and handled. Color schemes for rooms will have meaning only when the actual materials are used. To discuss color schemes verbally, supply the class with diagrams of rooms, and have these colored with water colors is not sufficient. Too much attention is concentrated on laying on washes, the five finger exercises of the design maker. The attention is on the making of the symbol, not on the concrete problem of the color. Again, the water color diagram seldom represents the actual problem-the texture, color, and design of the material to be used. The student is required to think in terms of generalities before she is even acquainted with the specific concrete possibilities.

The problem of the appreciator is in the store downtown where she looks over a confusing mass of wall papers, cannot make up her mind, describes the room more or less inaccurately to the salesman and takes his judgment, which too often is based on latest designs and style instead of taste. To train the taste of this practical searcher for home comfort who has absolutely no desire to draw, the papers must be brought to her, and she must be taught by contrast to discriminate and select those that will fit the conditions of her home. The draperies must be considered in their real form and not as water color washes.