Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV CIVICS FOR OLDER PUPILS The extension of civic interests The pupils in the older grades who study civics may be permitted to go beyond the limitations of life in home and school and community. All about the daily life of city children are municipal activities full of significant interest. The boy knows intimately the work of the police and fire departments. He watches the construction of sewers and streets. He is old enough to understand the superintendency of the school department, and to begin to value its generous plans for his playmates and himself. Many months of the year he is enjoying the parks and playgrounds controlled by the city. His teacher should bring before his attention the social and humanitarian benefits that accrue from such municipal domain. Local points of attack In the tiny hamlet where but a dozen children are gathered together and taught in a little school,or where the same children are carried to a consolidated school at a center, in either case, as well as in the larger wards of a great city, this vivifying of life in its conjunctive relationship is the important and pleasurable task for the teacher of socialized civics. From the outset the teacher realizes that not only are there the local points of attack to make with the work of the Commission of Charity, or the Board of Health, or other municipal departments, but national and state relationships are also in the environment to explain and to discuss and to give reason for appreciation. The child in the city school may well be shown exhibits of the difference between a clean and an unclean market. And from such an illustration as a basis to work, the splendid advance made by our Government in Pure Food Laws may be explained to any child a dozen years old. The post-office service in urb...