I almost quit. But I'm glad now I didn't. I suppose it's one of the best chapters in the book, too. It's the chapter we had in school, in reading assignment, and I hate that so that it almost spoiled the book for met" Now let's consider what might have happened if the intellectual had been supplemented by an emotional appeal, - if it had been "a spirit, and not a mechan- ism." If the school had made a game of close observation in school reading, if they had given it emotional meaning, do you think the result would have been the same? If the school reading course had sensed the emotional gulf between a test and a contest, would the result have been the same? His school made a contest of spelling. And he loves to spell. His spelling is three — in advance of his class. He won the whole school's spelling bee, but that, you note, was sport. That had emotional validity. That tests accuracy of observation too, but his approach is a different one. He puts more of himself into observation of detail in spelling, as a sport, than he puts into observation of detail in reading as a study. When the brilliant young President of the University a? Chience says that the purpose of education is to train students to think, one wonders whether that statement gets clearly into the open, the whole story. Doesn't education have to do more than just that? Doesn't it have to provide experience, as well as know- ledge? Do children run adventuring to school as they do to a playground which operates as a really exploratory center? I'm not talking about all playgrounds now, nor all schools. Don't misunderstand that. I hasten to admit that many a playground, if not most of them, are no more vital than the tombs of the Pharaohs, and many a school no doubt is as electric with power as a crackling dynamo. I'm only saying that when either brings people to it with eagerness on their faces, the institution is summoning more than cold reason into conference. It is appeal- ing to other drives and urges as well. It is issuing a call to the emotion. I -~ 7 -