through the sense of sight. Texture, odor, taste, or sound have practically nothing to do with it.

To the five months' old baby the bright colored beads or powder box are decidedly more attractive than less colorful objects of pleasing odor, but as development proceeds other influences affect judgment. As mind and hand become co-ordinated definite experiences are received which largely determine future selections. For example, a doll may feel pleasant to the touch, or a biscuit or hard food of a certain shape may appeal to the taste and these sensations and experiences at once begin the child's education. As experiences multiply tastes are formed and the aesthetic nature of the child is affected.

Paralleling these external experiences are certain other developments which spring from within. These are summed up in the one word "imagination." By just what process the child's mind begins to imagine things is quite unknown. In fact there is reason to believe that there is no process. The mind is nothing but a vehicle for receiving impressions and as they are received it takes flight at will with no beginning or ending, or perhaps with both, but apparently quite unrelated to any recent experiences

or events.

So the child mind develops from infancy to adolescence, delicately sensitive to its environment and learning rapidly through pain and pleasure and protected care or neglect, as the case may be, accumulating at a terrific rate the vast amount of knowledge necessary for the preservation and maintenance of life.

Now as mental growth continues the child is particularly sensitive to his aesthetic surroundings. He is seemingly quite unconscious of them but just as we fail to see the message being transmitted through the ether waves by the radio instrument and yet receive it a thousand miles away in all its original clearness and thought, so beauty and ugliness are recorded upon the tuned receiving apparatus of the brain and sooner or later find expression, clear and vivid as when first received.

Last All children love beauty. The whole human race loves it, for that matter, but with children that love is free, spontaneous, deep, and perfect. Their response is pure and true, unaffected by greed or the desire for possession. That beauty exists is all they care about, content only to enjoy. Enjoyment is not always evident and is often affected by self-consciousness, but it is even more keen in the reserved and repressed nature. Usually, however, the enjoyment of beauty seeks expression and is so evidenced through taste in selection or arrangement or creation or all three.

91 As we all love beauty so we all have taste, some good, some not so good. Nevertheless we display it every day. In other words, life consists of making choices in which we may show good taste or bad taste.

Good taste, among other things is dependent upon happiness and that in turn upon health. Children do not need to be made happy. If they are healthy they are happy and so long as they are healthy, which involves rest, they will sing and laugh and express joy in beauty and so naturally cultivate good taste.

nts are true then we should make every effort to conWe should foster it and treat it considerately, and unity for its growth and expansion.

If all the forego serve this natural a finally, we should ut What has thus ation in child educ aesthetic; third, exper

med up as follows: first, aesthetic considernce; second, children are instinctively tacts and internal mental reactions

tend to formulate taste; fourth, health has a direct bearing upon aesthetic development; fifth, every opportunity should be offered for the promotion of the aesthetic in education.

Let us consider further these points. Aesthetic consideration in child education is vitally important. I hold this to be especially true in the United States of America. As a nation we are somewhat selfish and self-centered. We indulge ourselves and our children, we are apt to think of our own ends before we consider another's rights. We talk about brotherhood but we appear to practice it only when it does not interfere with our own interests. Instead of trying to support our own laws we often try to evade them. For example, we resent interference in our speeding and some drink today as they never thought of drinking, in violation of their own principles, and the law of the land. I fear we are hypocritical and snobbish, conscious of our wealth and therefore our superiority over the rest of the human race. We appear to know as little of beauty as we know, by expression at least, of good manners. Our expressions in buildings and monuments are painfully self-conscious, successful in our eyes only as they are well advertised, cost a goodly sum, and imitate poorly the Greek.

This is rather pessimistic but quite deserving. Our methods in both foreign and domestic trade competition are open to question. When we want something we go out —and we get it—in the early days by might of combat, today by might of finance. This has tended to develop a sense of unjust power which harbors no interference. As the creditor nation we take to ourselves credit for being quite the superior people of the earth. Confident of this superiority we do just about as we “darn please."

When we go abroad we expect deference to our slightest whim, constant service, immediate supply to all our wants. When we return home we study how we may beat Uncle Sam at the customs house.

At home we seem to want food that is out of season, our children must have their cars, and other things we never could have; our conversation drifts toward such topics as the latest murder case, the newest divorce sensation, how to obtain a drink of "real stuff" or narrow escapes from the police, or death, or both, when auto speedingI defy you to bring together any group of men and women that will not discuss one of these topics in the first fifteen minutes of conversation.

And why? Largely perhaps because they are unable to discuss other topics of equally general interest and further because these topics are the headline titles in our daily press. Such a state of affairs is deplorable, first, because a nation with these characteristics cannot maintain its supremacy and, secondly, because children are wonderful imitators and quickly learn from their elders.

You may say that I have presented only an extreme point of view, which may be true, but extremes are most in evidence and unfortunately are too often the guide posts of progress. Our salvation lies in counteracting these extremes. This may not be done with adults but can be accomplished through the children. Through early training we must lend our minds to finer thoughts, thoughts of beauty in fine art, music, literature, poetry, drama, and the common things of life.

A music-loving people, a people of critical discernment in the art of the poet and writer, a people loving drama as an art; but more important still, a nation of men, women and children of aesthetic taste, loving beauty in all its manifestations even in the common things of the office and factory and home, must not only produce different topics of general conversation, but must become the very antithesis of the picture

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presented: a generous people, thoughtful of others and obedient to the n will.

car money must then express a very different taste and will be lavishly used to beautify. Men will create for a critical public, men will construct, content to men will live, confident now in their superiority in all matters of taste, knowing erein, and therein alone lies the only possibility of permanent greatness. hildren are instinctively aesthetic. It is natural for them to love beauty in all ms—beauty in color, beauty in shape, beauty in odor and texture and taste, y in sound, beauty in movement, and beauty in character. At an early age they h bits of colored ribbon or paper, shells and colored and smooth stones. Later make comparisons and crudely classify even swapping with each other to make collection more beautiful.

Children love the stars and the sunset, the leaves and flowers and what a revelation ao study the waves of expression in the child watching a mother bird feed its young! ✓ thrill with joy and pride over the beautiful character in the story they read or e read to them.

These aesthetic sensibilities are altogether instinctive and often find expression e unexpectedly and as usually happens they want to share their joy with the one → love best, “It is these little beginnings of aesthetic joy, socially shared, that makes rich, if cultivated." Furthermore, when given a slight impetus most charming and ve beauty is expressed by children.

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Experiences due to external contacts and internal mental reactions tend to formuFe taste. We know how susceptible children are to influences of every sort and how rmful such influences may be. "Child sensitiveness, open to harm, makes it also a ssible opening for good." Mrs. Richmond in The Mind of the Child writes, "If, as on as a child could understand anything at all, his surroundings included the appreciaon of what is beautiful and noble and true, we should not find ourselves engaged in sting out a lying spirit when, late in the day, we took up the burden of our child lucation." President Faunce has said that to surround the child with ugliness does im more harm than can ever be done by trashy literature. He may not read the rash, but he does see the ugliness and is harmed by it. We not only fail to surround ur children with this beauty but I fear we stifle out of their little hearts their own sponaneous expressions and love of it, perhaps not consciously on our part but none the less a completely. How prone we are to call attention to childhood acts. How willingly we "show them off." When in spite of his upbringing a youngster shows real interest in a concert or art gallery we immediately act as if we thought him queer, and, because with their God-given talents we seem to hold artists queer, we think the child may be an artist. How cruel and thoughtless a parent can be! Instead of fostering this interest in beauty of natural and human expression we take undue notice of it, embarrass and hurt the child's sensiblities and quench that spirit, which alone can save our civilization.

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art

On the other hand contacts brought about as common experiences of daily living will quickly mold expression and taste until at a surprisingly early age the child will make selections and choices with confidence and reasonable sureness. When made within the limits of their experiences children's selections and choices, if properly cultivated, are quite as accurate and practical as those of the most cultured adult.

It is of course easy to criticize. It is less easy to criticize justly. It is still more difficult to criticize justly and with tact. A word of caution should be said here, that

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the critical attitude of both children and adults may be charitable and without hurt. A cultivated taste based upon the natural aesthetic sensibilities of children were better uncultivated if as a result the child becomes merely a destructive, egotistical critic. But such a result need never follow properly directed aesthetic training. The training itself would prevent this for beauty even in one's self is the constant watchword. So as tastes are formed through the child's outward and inward experiences they should become refined and good with reason in everything.

Health has a direct bearing upon aesthetic development. This is so self-evident that it should require little discussion. Mental reaction to ill health is never conducive to an appreciation of beauty. A child with a throbbing toothache isn't going to love or enjoy anything. A sickly boy or girl cannot appreciate even a circus. But both cases offer easy opportunities for the development of ill manners and ill deeds as well as increased ill health. The first step then in making possible the expansion and development of native aesthetic instincts is to provide good health. Only through health and happiness may we enjoy beauty.

Finally every opportunity should be offered for aesthetic training in education. Surely what is natural and instinctive in the child should become a basis for at least one phase of later formal education. To ignore this as we are now too frequently doing were a crime against nature as well as ourselves-music, aesthetic dancing, dramatics, literature, and poetry must receive more emphasis if our future citizens are to make the world better and our country greater. But even more important than these is that department of the school curriculum, too often slighted in most schools and totally ignored in many, art education.

Call it what you please, drawing, aesthetic training, or art education, I claim that the study of the elements of beauty and the practice of her principles is fundamentally necessary in our educational scheme. Beauty is the expression of efficiency in our world. Anything well done is an expression of some element of beauty. Artistic expression is merely beautiful or efficient expression-"Art is the beautiful doing of anything that has to be done."

Children are instinctively beautiful. They are naturally graceful. They are thoroughly artistic. Our future demands the recognition of these instincts to the extent of most carefully preserving and protecting them and cultivating and training them. We hear a lot about vocational education but “man may not live by bread alone." We hear much of education fitting for practical life but what has this so-called practical life in store but cruel competition, slave-driving hustle, strikes, walk-outs, and worry. We read much of self-made men in our magazines but what of their joy in living; and with all their wealth, for they are chosen for publicity because they have made money, to what extent are they really able to either administer it justly or enjoy its returns.

Our criminally commercial appeals to unnatural instincts in grade children arè educational crimes. Our arithmetics are often filled with examples of exhorbitant profit, our geographies emphasize the colossal expansion of trade, not the dignity of labor, our histories deal with wars, their causes and effects, not the cultural development of nations, and even our drawing has become wholesale poster competitions for money prizes.

In the aesthetic seed which is implanted in all offspring of the human race lies our opportunity of the future. I firmly believe that through a constant friendly and guiding support of children's love and expressions of beauty must come gentleness, gener

osity, charity, joy, and love of fellow-man. I firmly believe that through the proper support and teaching of art education will come refinement of taste and beauty of living. I am sure that the aesthetic sensibilities of childhood are the potential attributes of fine and noble character in manhood and womanhood.

CO-ORDINATING A COMMUNITY'S CHILD-CARING WORK THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE FUNCTIONS OF THE JUVENILE COURT AND THOSE OF THE GENERAL CHILD

CARING AGENCIES

Mrs. Ruth I. Workum, Executive Secretary, Ohio Humane Society, Cincinnati

In approaching the subject of the relation of the juvenile court and the child-caring agencies, we are brought at once to the consideration of the much discussed question as to the administrative function of the juvenile court. Work of the public and private agency is frequently so closely merged that it is difficult to clearly indicate the lines of demarcation which separate them. The state realizes that to safeguard its own welfare, it must give to its children proper protection and guidance, in order to avert future dependency, crime, and economic loss. In recognizing its responsibility for dependents, the state has given to the juvenile court a comprehensive program for child conservation, which must of necessity include a mixed function, judicial and administrative.

The extent of administrative work which the juvenile court assumes is closely related to the local conditions surrounding it. Where the private agency does not exist or does not properly co-operate the court must naturally assume the functions of the agency. To those who believe that the state should, or will eventually, carry the burden of the private agencies, the administrative work of the juvenile court is one of the most desirable elements to be fostered.

In Ohio, where the juvenile court and the court of domestic relations are combined, it is at once apparent that the court cannot offer all the devices needed for the proper handling of the complex problems involved. It is recognized that a multiplicity of contacts arises in adjustments on a single case, and the court cannot hope to develop within itself all the special departments which the community has maintained through private support and effort. Therefore the court in Cincinnati has seen fit to ally itself with the social agencies, church federations, the schools and various clubs, in an effort to give to the child the best possible adjustment on his problem.

Let us consider for a moment the advantages of services given by private agencies, as compared with outside activities of the court. The agency is first of all an elastic instrument, capable of a friendly and informal approach. The court somewhat bound by those forms and rigid elements which must to a certain degree adhere to judicial investigation is frequently obliged to move under a fixed standard of rules and statutes. The agency has the opportunity of reaching the child in the pre-dependent state, and of averting that advanced state of disaster which usually exists before the matter is brought to the attention of the court. An investigation from the agency carries less opprobrium than a visit from the court, as many are under the impression that court investigation means that delinq dependency are established facts. The efforts of an agency are voluntary definite expansion. Thus the agency may

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