Public education in America has, throughout its entire history, emphasized training for work almost to the exclusion of training for leisure. This emphasis in the early Colonial schools was not surprising, for the life of the pioneer was hard and there was little leisure either among the young or the old. The Colonial elementary school taught the bare rudiments of an education-reading and the elements of religion; the secondary school sought to give a few boys a knowledge of Latin grammar which would admit them to college; and the college undertook the training of a still more select group of boys for services in church and state. At each of the three educational levels the youth received rigorous training in memorizing processes. There was little motivation other than reproof, punishment, and the awe of failure.