of all high-school student activities are in the future to be handled through this bank by the voucher system. It is believed that this will result in a more satisfactory accounting of the funds of the various organizations. As students in the department do the most of the actual work of keeping the books and accounts, but under the supervision of the head of the department, the students are given training in actual business transactions involving the handling of cash and various business papers. Thus actual experience of the most practical kind possible is given the students as a part of their regular school work, an experience and training in exactly the kind of work these people expect to do after finishing their high-school course. In 1912, by recommendation of the superintendent, the board of education in Leavenworth, Kans., made bank savings a part of the course of study. The recommendation made by the superintendent to the board, and adopted by it, was: 1) That a banking transaction must take place between the bank and the child, if the greatest good was to be obtained from the endeavor. 2) The teacher should not enter into the transaction. (3) An organized effort made by principals and teachers in teaching savings. Outlined matter sent out by superintendent. Taught in regular class work. (4) Bank opened in each building in the hall or in the principal's office. Hour, 8.30 a. m. Bank clerk present with deposit slips, etc. (5) A regular schedule for each bank. No advertising. The Ann Arbor, Mich., public schools have two unique features in connection with their school savings system. The stamp plan, with folders, is in use. The students in the commercial department of the high school act as messengers for collection of savings in the various schools. They are assigned to duty for specified periods by the head of the commercial department and are required to count and record the savings of the schools to which they are sent and to bring them to the high school. When the system was established, the board of education could not agree on a bank that would have control of all the deposits and an arrangement was agreed upon so that a folder filled with stamps (50 one-cent stamps) might be deposited in any local savings bank and accepted in the local clearing house as a check on the savings deposits which were in a separate account in the bank that held other school moneys. In this way pupils may open a savings account in the bank of their choice, and the banks find it wise to be agreeable to their young patrons who are to be the business men and women of the community in a few years. XI. VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE. As yet the prevocational school and the vocational school, as agencies for vocational guidance, reach only the few. Various plans for reaching all who need guidance have been proposed, but the work is new and large results can not be claimed with assurance. What is done in various places may seem crude and awkward, but the movement has great possibilities and already it has done the important thing of drawing some attention from the subjects of the curriculum to direct attention toward the boy and girl, with the excellent result that the need of considering their individualities is felt. The Middletown (Conn.) high school endeavors to aid its students in finding suitable employment. The card to be filled by the pupil applying for work is here reproduced: MIDDLETOWN HIGH-SCHOOL EMPLOYMENT FORM. Do you wish employment afternoons, Saturdays, or both?. Grand Rapids is the only city known to the writer in which a systematized scheme of vocational guidance is worked out under the control of the board of education. This guidance is given, beginning with the seventh grade and extending through the high school, and is developed in connection with the work in English: GRAND RAPIDS. A brief statement of the aim of the work in each grade is given, beginning with the seventh and extending through the twelfth. Seventh grade: Theme: Vocational Ambition. Purpose: To arouse within the pupil a desire to be somebody and something worth while in the world. Eighth grade: Theme: The Value of an Education. Purpose: To impress upon the pupil the need and means of obtaining some further preparations for life than that of the grammar grades of the public schools. Ninth grade: First semester Theme: The Elements of Character That Make for Success in Life. Purpose: To draw out an understanding of real success in life and how it is obtained, and to apply the fundamental lessons of character building to the needs of each pupil. Second semester Theme: Vocational Biography. Purpose: To continue the same lessons from the lives of successful men and women in varied fields of endeavor. Tenth grade: First semester Theme: The World's Work. Purpose: To study vocation in general in order that the pupil's vision of the call to service may be as broad as possible. Second semester Theme: Choosing a Vocation. Purpose: To attempt to select that vocation or general field of occupation for which the pupil by self-analysis seems best fitted. Eleventh grade: First semester Theme: Preparation for Life's Work. Purpose: To plan out a definite course of study and conduct to meet the special requirements of the profession, business, or industry chosen. Second semester Theme: Vocational Ethics. Purpose: To study the moral problems peculiar to the chosen business, profession, or occupation. Twelfth grade: First semester Theme: Social Ethics. Purpose: To study the relation of the individual in his future vocation to society. Second semester Theme: Civic Ethics. Purpose: To study the relation of the individual in his future vocation to the State. The movement for vocational guidance has attained such proportions that the propaganda has its own organization known as the Vocational Guidance Association. This association met with the National Society for the Promotion of Industrial Education at Grand Rapids, October 19 to 25, 1913. The object of the association according to its constitution is: To promote intercourse between those who are interested in vocational guidance; to give a stronger and more general impulse and more systematic direction to the study and practice of vocational guidance; to establish a center or centers for the distribution of information concerning the study and practice of vocational guidance and to cooperate with the public schools and other agencies in the furtherance of these objects. CREDIT FOR HOME WORK. School men have for several years bemoaned the fact that modern city conditions make it impossible for boys and girls to receive that practical preparation for life which the country home of to-day and the urban home of 30 years ago afforded. The city boy, they say, has no opportunity for doing "chores," which are so effective in giving him an insight into everyday duties and which are so fruitful in developing his mental faculties and inculcating the spirit of work. The modern home has little wood to chop, water to carry, or repairs to make. The advent of the department store, with its offerings of readymade clothes, and of the bakery, with its ready-made rolls and bread, have taken from the modern city girl the opportunity of making garments, of baking, and of doing a thousand and one things about the home which the girl of a generation ago did so well to her own advantage in later life. Efforts to correlate the work of the home with that of the school have heretofore, for the most part, been confined to the country schools. Now several cities have undertaken to give credit for home work. Among these cities are West Chester, Pa., Portland, Oreg., Leavenworth, Kans., and St. Cloud, Minn. The last three give credits in high school only. In Oregon any high school in the State may allow a total of 10 per cent of credits for a university certificate of admission, on good life, good spirit, and good work at home. Supt. Alderman, of Portland, reports: We are giving credit in school for music work done outside of school, and are in some schools giving credit for any work done at home. |