and the German standard of efficiency would long ago have dominated our lower schools as they have controlled the policy of our universities.

Now, I have no quarrel with scholarship or scientific research. If a democracy cannot stand the truth, it cannot endure; and if it ceases to add to human knowledge, it will surely stagnate and finally deserve to perish. The trouble with our schools and colleges is that they have been satisfied with knowledge put up, like breakfast foods, in small packages with attractive labels but indigestible contents. The main thing has been to get knowledge because, in the words laboriously copied when we were learning to write, "Knowledge is Power," but in our getting we have sometimes forgotten the injunction of the wise man to get understanding. We have been so keen to get the exact letter of the truth, so exact that the degree of variability can be measured and recorded in decimals of many points, that we have often missed the spirit that giveth life. Exactness is no crime, however, and measurement is not a sin. In fact, Americans might safely accustom themselves to greater exactness and apply more certain measurement to their work. The fault is, not that we have been too accurate, but that we have given too little attention to the relative worth and moral significance of the facts at our command.

The quest for moral standards. The ideals of the democracy towards which we are leaning are essentially moral, rather than intellectual or material. The intellectual and the material we have with us, and we are not likely to quit our hold on either. What I fear is that we shall not quickly seize upon the moral issues now presented

to us and incorporate them into our educational system. There is an autocratic way of doing things and there is a democratic way. The autocratic method stresses constituted authority, hands down rules and regulations, asks not the reasons why, assumes to know a priori what is best and right, and brooks no interference from those who may prefer not to be benefited in such predetermined fashion. The democratic method depends for its success upon coöperative effort and the acceptance of standards that are reasonably convincing. The one tends to drive; the other to lead. The subject of a monarchical State is not asked to understand, he need only obey. The free citizen who understands but does not obey is a menace to the State; he must know the right, accept it, and then unhesitatingly do his duty. In a final analysis, the safety of the State, the maintenance of civil order and social stability, depends primarily upon the discipline that makes right conduct habitual.

Americans are obsessed with a knowledge of the rights of man. We take it in our mother's milk; it seems to pervade the very air we breathe. But we are slow to learn that for every right there is a corresponding duty, for every privilege, a corresponding responsibility. A right once learned is immediately in working order, but a duty recognized may result in nothing more than a twinge of conscience. A duty does not become a potent force until it is fixed in habit. Once grant that schools are responsible for the character of their students, that they must teach the moral law, and see that its precepts function in the lives of citizens, we are transported into a new pedagogical realm. The most important part of our business,

then, becomes a matter of method. Discipline of a special kind takes a commanding place. How shall right habits be inculcated, and how shall selfish traits be eliminated? Answer this question, and you are on the highroad to success in the new pedagogical era.

Freedom of choice. - Someone may say, however, that right habits and good character are matters of opinion, that what suits one may not suit another, and that it will be just as difficult to satisfy our prospective masters on these points as on any other. My reply is that the freedom of a democracy consists not in doing what you please as an individual, nor in doing what you please as a class or party, but rather in the privilege of choosing your own authority and following your own leaders. It is the essence of government to rule, and the authority of a government must be respected. No one of us can escape the necessity of obedience to custom and law. We must yield or be outcasts of society. Under an autocracy we obey without question; under a democracy, we question and then obey. In either case, obedience is a virtue and disobedience is a sin or crime. The strongest motive to conformity in the one case is confidence in the ruling power; the dominant force in the other is the desire to see things straight and see them whole. The valuation of authority, either in the choice of leaders or the acceptance of standards, is a responsibility that may not be shirked by any citizen of a democratic State. It is the raison d'être of public education for all the people and to the widest extent.

Servants of the State. A democracy does not raise the question of transcendental right. It sees nothing

esoteric in the Golden Rule, and knows that no government or nation can long endure that disregards it. If the new democracy be merely a guise for a new kind of class selfishness, it will not last; if it have no higher purpose than to exploit those who disagree, it is bound to lose. I have faith that men capable of reconstructing a world that has been drenched with blood, weighed down with poverty, and overwhelmed with sorrow, will not be found wanting either in sympathy or vision or common sense. Mistakes will doubtless be made, and progress may be slow, but if the new generation be taught aright, success will surely come. The corner stone of the new state will be education not merely instruction in things worth knowing but also discipline in things worth doing. It will be education for citizenship in a society that is pledged to maintain justice for all and to guarantee to each the attainment of what he deserves. This is work for strong teachers teachers who can free themselves from hampering traditions, teachers who can rise above party and class and creed, teachers who practice what they preach, and who preach only the truth. Such teachers need fear no act of legislature nor any mandate of a governing board. Bound by professional honor, they will command liberty for themselves by assuring freedom to their fellow men. Servants of the State, they will show their loyalty in patriotic deeds. They call to us to come up higher. It is our reasonable service. We can do no less and be true to the highest ideals of our profession.

HE obvious outcome of the World War in education is that schools more than ever before are

THE

agencies of the State. The need is for better and more patriotic citizens. More and better education is the only certain means of getting a better citizenship.

Teachers are servants of the State. The greatest obstacles to the Americanization of our schools are the traditions affecting the employment, remuneration, and qualifications of teachers. The teacher as a civil servant whose foremost duty is the promotion of the welfare of the State is a new conception in American life. Time was when the teacher was a chattel sold in the open market, or a private tutor employed to give instruction in subjects selected by parents, or an adherent of some church whose chief qualification was his ability to safeguard the tenets of his sect. Now teachers are employed by boards of education of a district or city under rules and regulations only slightly limited by state laws. And despite all laws enjoining it, the principle that education is a function of the state is recognized; practically, the conduct of schools is a local enterprise, controlled by petty officials who are ever biased by local interests and personal whims. The teacher is in reality the employee of the local board, and as an employee, is subjected to all the vagaries of local

1An address delivered before the students on the occasion of the Opening Session of Summer School, Teachers College, 1919.