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

TH

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.

pride and prejudice. To overcome these faults, some of our states have created laws to protect the teacher and define his work, but an individual teacher, no matter how just his cause or how patriotic his intent, has little chance of being heard, if his desires run counter to the whims of the local board. Group action seems to be the only way to progress in a democratic State.

Upsetting tradition. The tradition that a teacher is an employee of a family or institution or community, to give such service as the employer wants, is responsible for the practice of hiring teachers in the cheapest market. When teachers are paid less than janitors, milkmen, and street cleaners, it is obvious either that sweatshop methods prevail or that the services given are of little worth. Whether a person's service is worth much or little depends upon his vocational skill and his will to work. Back of technical ability lies knowledge. The person who knows what to do and how to do it is an artisan, a trade worker; he who also knows why he does it, and in his doing is guided by high ideals, is a professional worker. By tradition, teaching is a trade; we hope to make it a profession not merely for the well-being and comfort of teachers, but because the country has need of instructors possessing culture, technical knowledge, and professional skill who will patriotically devote themselves to the service of the nation. In the Americanization of our public schools we need professional experts, and it is the duty of those who know the kind of expert service needed, to use all honorable means of securing it.

A policy of employment. When teachers are regarded as employees, it inevitably follows that their services are

measured in terms of private interest rather than public good. Tenure of office, remuneration, and vocational advancement are all conditioned upon satisfying their employers. Resistance to official demands, however unreasonable, and advocacy of reforms, however desirable, are alike dangerous experiments, when the take-it-or-leave-it policy of employment is in force. Under such circumstances, coöperation for any purpose except mutual protection is hardly to be thought of. So it happens that the individual teacher is left to himself to ply "the sorriest of trades."

A premium on specialization. Once grant, however, that the Americanization of our public schools calls for expert leadership, and that the methods used and the ends sought are not subject to private control or local bias, and you put teachers on a different status. Not only is a premium put on culture, technical knowledge, and professional skill, but it becomes a patriotic duty to realize the highest professional ideals in the training of American citizens. The individual teacher will find inspiration and renewed courage in the consciousness of marching shoulder to shoulder with his fellows in the mighty army recruited to fight the battles of civilization and modern democracy.

Fostering consciousness of kind. — The time is past, it seems to me, when teachers should be dissuaded from group organization. The war has made some kind of organization inevitable in that it has given to teaching a new objective and to teachers a new consciousness of kind. The new patriotism, founded in justice and devoted to freedom, must be imprinted on the coming generations.

It is this sense of overwhelming responsibility that is forcing our ablest leaders to devise ways and means of unifying the latent strength of the half-million of teachers in the country. In this effort, they are but following at a respectful distance the example of our oldest professions, law and medicine, which long ago set up professional standards and adopted codes of professional ethics. They also have before them the example of trade-unions, and some teachers, smarting under the injustice of insufficient wage, have not hesitated to grasp the hand of labor. The time has come when teachers must decide whether they will lead in their own way, or be led in some other way, whether they will set up standards worthy of a profession, or continue to be employees in a trade.

Professional standards. An organization of teachers, nation-wide and properly authoritative, must be founded on principles that will be universally recognized as valid, and its conduct must be above reproach. No selfish motive can be allowed to interfere with the realization of its ideals. If the present world crisis makes such an organization possible, it also imposes acceptance of professional standards.

A code of professional ethics, therefore, is the first and most important desideratum a code reaching to the individual teacher and defining the purpose of the organization. The organization itself exists merely to consolidate the strength of its individual members and to apply it at strategic points. The problems of tactics and strategy, however, must be in the hands of competent leaders who themselves shall be guided by professional ideals.

I do not flatter myself that I have any special quali