Superintendent Sears has some suggestions to offer.  In his opinion the subject of occupational choice should be debated thoroughly in the public schools.  He favors the introduction of some plan embodying this idea in the upper grades of the grammar school, under conditions that would give each boy an opportunity to talk, and that would encourage him to consult his parents and teachers.  The debates might be held monthly, and preparation should be required.  Experts or successful men in various occupations might be called in to address the pupils and furnish authoritative information.  The questions debated should involve the advisability of learning a trade and the choice of a trade, and the same considerations with respect to the professions, the mercantile pursuits, and so on.  The pupils should be allowed to vote on the merits of each question debated.  By such a method, thinks Mr. Sears, the boys would gain the valuable training which debating gives, would devote considerable thought to the question of their future employment, would acquire much information, and would get their parents more interested in the matter than many of them are.

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(New York Evening Post)

GIRLS AND A CAMP

NOW IT IS THAT MANY COVEYS OF STUDENTS ARE HEADED TOWARD LAKE AND MOUNTAIN—­JUST HOW IT PAYS

With the sudden plunge into a muggy heat, more suggestive of July than of the rare June weather of poets, there has begun the exodus of summer camp folk, those men and women who add to the slender salary of the teaching profession the additional income made by running camps for boys and girls during the long vacation.  They stretch, these camps, in rapidly extending area from Canada through Maine and northern New England, into the Adirondacks and the Alleghenies, and then across toward the Northwest and the Rockies.  It is quite safe to assert that there is not a private school of importance that does not take under its protection and support at least one such institution, while large numbers of teachers either own camps or assist in their management as instructors.

One group, unmistakably the advance guard of a girls’ camp, assembled at the Grand Central Station on Wednesday.  There were two alert, dignified women, evidently the co-principals; a younger woman, who, at least so the tired suburban shopper decided, was probably the athletic instructor; two neat colored women, and a small girl of twelve, on tiptoe with excitement, talking volubly about the fun she would have when they got to the lake and when all the other girls arrived.  Her excited chatter also revealed the fact that father and mother had just sailed for Europe, and, while she thought of them with regret, there was only pleasure in prospect as she started northward.  There was much baggage to be attended to, and consultation over express and freight bills, with interesting references to tents, canoes, and tennis nets.