'N times of unparalleled storm and stress, when the

IN

traditions of centuries crumble and the ideals of

civilization are weighed in the balance of war, the patriots of every nation give anxious thought to the social order that shall arise from such chaos. Preparedness is the word that springs to every lip. It is used alike by those who would take the easiest way to let well enough alone, and by those who wish to reconstruct the world. In its lowest terms, it means preparation for military defense against foreign aggression; in its highest reaches, it aspires to the regeneration of human nature, so that the brute in man shall forever be held in leash. However men may differ as to the means of bringing on the millennium, the fairest flower in the blood-soaked fields of the world to-day is the universal desire for peace on earth and good will to men.

Rights and their correlatives. There can be no peace without good will among men, and no will is good that does not beget justice, protect ownership, and secure life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are the rights of man, incorporated by our forefathers into the fabric of our government and bequeathed to us as a precious legacy to have and to hold in trust for all those who would be citizens of a free and independent state. The

1 A revised reprint from the Teachers College Record, January, 1917.

right to worship God in one's own way; the right to trade, to conduct commerce, to accumulate property, to take up land, and, by occupation, to own it without restriction; the right to barter with one's neighbors in matters spiritual, temporal, and political; the right to be one's own master these are the ideals of the founders of our nation. And when they set up a government of their own, they took particular pains to see that their rights were secure.

Read the Constitution of the United States, and note the rights and duties enumerated. Duties are enjoined only upon office-holders for the protection of the rights of citizens; and, as if the directors of the joint-stock corporation could not be trusted to return adequate dividends, a string of amendments has been added, still further defining the rights of individuals. No word anywhere in that famous document directly defines the duties of citizens an omission that would have wrecked the Republic in its infancy, except for the genius of Chief Justice Marshall and the assiduous labors of a few patriotic statesmen. But for more than a century we have slowly been learning the lesson that rights have their correlative duties; that the right to one's own property imposes the duty of protecting the property of others; that the right to freedom brings with it the duty of obedience to the law; that the right to pursue happiness enjoins the duty of guarding others from misery; and, in a word, that the rights of citizenship, secured by government, make it the duty of every citizen to give patriotic service whenever needed and at whatever cost.

Problems of individuality. Individualism bas so long been dominant in our social and political life, it is no wonder

that it has also directed the course of our education. The theory that all men are created equal is easily interpreted to mean that any man may become anything. Granted that the individual has a right to direct his own development, does it follow that he may do as he pleases? And if the state provides schools and teachers for the education of the young, what has the state a right to expect from its training, and what is the duty of its pupils towards the public? Can individuals naturally selfish, who have the American way of wanting to do as they please, be trained in schools to be efficient, patriotic citizens? If so, what kind of training should an American school give to the prospective American citizen? Such questions as these are pressing for answer now as never before in our history.

Teaching the duties of citizenship. A survey of American education does not disclose much evidence of a controlling desire to promote patriotic service. Indeed, if one were to confine one's attention to the work of the schools, particularly of the public schools, where, if anywhere, one might expect to find the most direct efforts towards teaching the duties of citizenship, surprise and disappointment would follow. Teachers there are, in great numbers, who see the future man or woman in their pupils, and who labor unceasingly to fortify them against their day of need; but the test that passes pupils from grade to grade does not take into account growth in character or moral strength. The work of teachers is judged primarily by what their pupils know. The virtues and vices of our future citizens are a sealed book which our educational authorities do not open to inspec

tion. The state seems to have overlooked the fact that intellectual power is as great an asset to the crook as to the honest man. Public safety, therefore, calls for more than the schools are officially encouraged to give.

Environment as an educational factor. an educational factor. - Education, however, is not wholly a matter of schools and school training. Indeed, if it were, we should come badly off. Consider for a moment the time problem. Our children are in school at the most five hours a day, five days in the week, for forty weeks in the year — a total of 1,000 hours. The average child of school age is awake fifteen hours a day for 365 days in the year—a total of 5,475 hours. Any way you reckon it, the normal child is receptive, getting impressions, using ideas, reaching conclusions, fixing habits, organizing his modes of behavior which, Professor James said, is education, four hours outside of school for every hour spent in school. Let the school be administered by directors of the widest vision and the highest ideals; let it be equipped with the best appliances, and staffed by teachers with the ripest scholarship, the finest training, and the clearest pedagogical insight, and you still have to reckon with forces inherent in the nature of the child and incident to his life in a society that are overwhelmingly and persistently directing his personal development.

Educational deadwood.-Next consider what the child is required to learn in school: first, to read, write, and spell correctly, and to speak grammatically a language almost as foreign to the child and as artificial at the time as any alien tongue; second, to learn numbers and their manipulation in a way that does not appeal to him, be

cause beyond his needs, and to an extent that often surpasses belief; third, to learn something of history and literature, which may or may not be amenable to reason; fourth, to become familiar with certain elements of geography and natural science, which may or may not be elementary nor natural nor science; fifth, to dabble in music, art, handwork, cooking, sewing, and a variety of subjects more or less dependent upon the whims of school boards and the preferences of teachers. If to this showing of what is ordinarily regarded as essentials, you add the "deadwood" that has floated into our schools on the stream of tradition and remained there, because of the conservatism of teachers and the wisdom of college faculties, you have a very formidable collection of materials which custom decrees shall be packed away somewhere and somehow in a child's cranium.

The child's share of the teacher's time. In the third place, I want you to consider how much of a teacher's time the average child gets in a school-day. In our rural ungraded schools, the teacher may have from fifteen to forty different classes in a five- or six-hour day. When such a school has six or eight groups - not an uncommon occurrence - the hours of schooling become minutes, and not many of them. Our Commissioner of Education reports: "If every minute of the five-hour school-day could be used for recitations, the recitations would have an average of nine and one-half minutes each.” Then turn to our city schools, with their classes of forty to sixty pupils ranged in rows, disciplined to silence, worked in teams. How many minutes a day does the average child get for personal contact with the teacher? How much