one set of urgent claims, his school another, the streets in which he plays another, and his own struggling individuality still another, the most important and yet the least recognised of them all.
To avoid this conflict as far as may be, and to simplify his mental world, he should live a life in which home and work and play were all fused together, a life which would only become possible if his School were to develop into a community. If these conditions could be even partially achieved, then a real test of the methods of teaching would be possible. The School would be freed, just as the children are freed, from the overwhelming weight of educational routine. Examinations, time tables, and inspectors, would be laid aside. If, in the end, examinations and time tables were needed, back they would come; but in the meantime the School, now a Community, would begin gradually with its children, to grow as they grew.
To make this development possible the Community would have to include many more of the activities of child life than the School does at present; it would have to get into even closer and more reciprocal touch with the mothers of its children, so that they should feel that the Community included them, and was theirs, just as the children were theirs; and it would have to keep its children through the years when they would otherwise go to the Council’s schools.
All these things the Community could do, and could do successfully. If it is financially possible the Community will do them, and having done them it will be able to test and to watch the development of the educational reforms which the early years of the School have suggested.
Feeling its way, watching, remembering, it will see how far, and with what modifications, the method which has made such happy and satisfactory babies can be used to make happy and satisfactory children.
EDUCATIONAL METHOD.
The only fundamental principle of the method is that non-collective teaching is the best for children of all ages.
The experiment of the Nursery School has abundantly proved that small children, working in their own time and on their own initiative, work eagerly and with persistence. Any progress that they make they feel to be their own achievement, and the concentration with which they struggle is astonishing. Guidance and help are never forced upon them, but are there for the children to take if they want, and the whole course of their work is therefore natural and spontaneous. When they are hungry for reading they