Science in the Gary schools, consequently, goes beyond the simple nature-study taught now in most elementary schools. The child has experience with the laboratory at an early age. The smaller children from the third, fourth, fifth, or sixth grades go into the chemistry, physics, botany, and zoölogy laboratories as “helpers” or “observers” to the work of the high-school classes. On the theory that “children are natural scientists” they are allowed contact with apparatus and materials. It is said, in fact, that experience shows the smaller children to be as careful as the older, and actually to cause less breakage and damage. The science classes in the lower grades are taught neither in formal recitation nor in formal laboratory work, but in a combination which the instructors describe as “experience meetings.” Pupils and teacher meet on common ground to exchange ideas about their experiences in dealing with natural phenomena. The outside world is treated as a great laboratory, and these “experience meetings” are used to interpret the children’s experiences in terms of scientific principles. There are demonstrations by the children, assisted by the teacher; a little individual laboratory work; and considerable vocal reading from textbooks and scientific story-books. The Gary science instructors believe that much time and money have been wasted in the teaching of science in high schools, owing to the elaborate methods which have treated the students as if the purpose was to make professional scientists of them all. Children, it is believed in Gary, cannot resort to the detailed research methods of scientists, but must have quick answers and quick results. There is a waste of energy in trying to duplicate in the laboratory the fundamental experiences of life which the children are constantly seeing outside in the great laboratory of nature. The care of the flowers and plants and gardens, the care of the animals in the zoo, and the study of their habits offer endless concrete material for building up the theoretical side of botany and zoölogy. The pupils are trained to observe and to write down what they see. One class in zoölogy last year made an illustrated booklet descriptive of the school zoo. The text was written by the pupils, the photographs prepared by them, and then the booklet was tastefully printed in the school printing-shop by the pupils themselves. The result was a charming brochure, in which not only the pupils themselves, but the whole school could take pride and pleasure. Such scientific study becomes an intimate and vital part of the entire school life.