“To me the most pathetic sight in the world is a score of little red children of nature corralled in a close room, and required to recite lessons in concert and go through the conventional daily programme of one of our graded common schools. The white child, born into a home that has a permanent building for its axis, passing most of its time within four solid walls, and breathing from its cradle days the atmosphere of wholesale discipline, is in a way prepared for the confinement and the mechanical processes of our system of juvenile instruction. The little Indian, on the other hand, is descended from a long line of ancestors who have always lived in the open and have never done anything in mass routine; and what sort of antecedents are these to fit him for the bodily restraints and the cut-and-dried mental exercises of his period of pupilage? Our ways are hard enough for him when he is pretty well grown; but in his comparative babyhood—usually his condition when first captured for school purposes—I can conceive of nothing more trying. “My heart warmed toward an eminent educator who once told me that if he could have the training of our Indian children he would make his teachers spend the first two years lying on the ground in the midst of the little ones, and, making a play of study, convey to them from the natural objects right at hand certain fundamental principles of all knowledge. I dare say that this plan, just as stated, would be impracticable under the auspices of a Government whose purse-strings are slow to respond to the pull of any innovation. But I should like to see the younger classes in all the schools hold their exercises in the open air whenever the weather permits. Indeed, during the last year of my administration I established a few experimental schoolhouses, in regions where the climate did not present too serious obstacles, which had no side-walls except fly-screen nailed to studding, with flaps to let down on the windward sides in stormy weather.”[39] The day schools, for the most part, are of simple construction. The teachers’ quarters are built adjoining, or the teacher occupies the ell or detached cottage. There is usually attractive land large enough for a garden. Except in the northern reservations, the day schools are more or less open-air affairs. In many of them the children are provided with a luncheon at noon. Among the poorer Indians, the school luncheon furnished by the Government constitutes the only substantial meal the Indian children receive. Most observers agree that boys and girls six to thirteen years of age should not be separated from their homes during the entire year. The day school surrounds the children during school hours with a wholesome environment and encourages them to work at home in the field and garden and promotes real education, culture and advancement.