A similar tendency to otiosity is noticeable and alarming in college and university education. It is attributable in part perhaps to previous training, but more to the influence of wealth and luxury, of fraternity life, athletics, and "soft" elective courses, which offer temptations to ease and idleness that are well-nigh irresistible to young men of unformed character and unfixed habits. MORAL EDUCATION As character always determines the use to which knowledge and training are put, it is of prime importance in education. Unless accompanied with the development of character, conscience, and conviction as guiding principles, the development of power and efficiency thru education may, thru misapplication, become a means of degradation. It is not surprising, therefore, that one of the most marked tendencies in American education is increased emphasis upon moral education, whereby there shall be woven into the warp and woof of the character of the growing child and youth the homely virtues needed for the proper guidance of everyday life. It is as needful and as democratic that our system of education should minister to the moral needs of all classes of our population as that it should minister to their industrial and vocational needs. In this land of teeming immigration, of multiplying factories and shops, of growing cities with their apartment houses and crowded tenements and numberless temptations, when on every hand the forces that tend to cast asunder the home ties, to shorten the hours of family association, to weaken the bonds of parental control, and to decrease the opportunities for moral training in the home are daily multiplying, an increased burden of moral education has been thrown upon the American school. For the formation and fortification of good character, it is wisely insisted that moral instruction should be given in all our schools by precept, example, and systematic teaching. It should be based, I believe, upon the fundamental teachings of the Book of Books, and the open Bible for moral but not sectarian instruction should have and hold its place in every public school. Example is more potent than precept, willing and doing the right, impelled by the right motive, the formation of right habits from right living, more potent than systematic teaching about right and wrong. "School is not preparation for life; school is life." In schoolroom and on playground the child finds as varied and typical opportunities as men find in the wide world beyond for doing right, for refraining from wrong, for acquiring under proper guidance and stimulation, by observation, imitation, association, and practice, self-restraint, industry, obedience, courage, courtesy, kindness, honesty, purity, charity, and all the other virtues that form and adorn human character. There is scarcely a school task, duty, or play that cannot be made by a skillful teacher to contribute to the moral education of the child. History and literature and the drama of the world's daily life furnish abundant material for illustration and inspiration. But over all, above all, more than all, is the daily example, the personal touch, the dynamic influence of the teacher with soul and consecration. Moral character is not formed by the mere memorizing of moral maxims and ethical principles. Feeling is the real key to it. Right feeling must precede right acting. Feeling, desire, motive, action-these are the steps to virtue or to vice. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. The heart of a little child must be kept with all diligence, if out of it shall come the issues of life. More and more are the methods of moral instruction conforming to these fundamental principles taught and illustrated in the writings and lives of the greatest moral reformers and teachers of the ages. THE ALTRUISTIC TENDENCY Selfishness and separateness will eat out the heart of any civilization and sow seeds of decay in any system of education. The spirit of all true democracy is essentially altruistic. There is much cause for rejoicing, therefore, in the growth of the altruistic spirit in American civilization and American education. In the business world where competition is sharpest and selfishness most to be expected, there is manifest evidence of a constantly growing sense of obligation by the rich to hold their wealth in trust for the advancement of society and to use it for the benefit of humanity. Perhaps no other century in the annals of time has to its everlasting credit so much of princely philanthropy. Is it too much to hope that even before the close of this twentieth century we shall witness the adoption by the rich everywhere of the high creed of one of the century's princeliest philanthropists, that to die rich should be counted a crime? The true scholar no longer seeks scholarship solely for personal enjoyment and individual superiority, but rather for social service and the happiness of humanity. Consecration of individual talent and power, of intellectual, moral, and spiritual wealth of every sort to the uplift of all shall at last. become the dominant doctrine in every American school. Every child born into the world in a democracy is not only the parents' child, but also the community's child, the state's child, the nation's child, and humanity's child. Out of every one of those relations grows a duty and an obligation from every one of us to every one of these American children, which we neglect at peril to the family, the community, the state, the nation, society, and all civilization. The school-less child is a menace to the best in all. If the child be not so educated as to lay upon him a reciprocal duty and obligation to render in return when he reaches manhood's estate a service to all, commensurate with that which he has received from all, then education is a failure and the vast expenditure for it a criminal waste. The fundamental basis of all public education in a democracy must be social and the fundamental aim of it must be altruistic. The individual is educated at the expense of the public, that he may be able to render to the public the best service of which he is capable; and he should be so educated as to desire and to determine to consecrate his education to such service. There can be no other justification of public education by general taxation. The old education was individualistic; the new education must be altruistic. This altruistic spirit is but a recognition and an application of democracy's fundamental principles of universal brotherhood, individual responsibility, and social obligation. THE PEACE MOVEMENT This peace movement that promises to sweep the world into universal peace, what is it but the natural product of this spirit of democracy and altruism, the fruit in due season of a Christian civilization whose founder was the Prince of Peace, and one of whose cardinal principles for two thousand years has been "Peace on earth, good will toward men"? But we may cry "Peace, Peace"; we may prate of its beauty to children. and to men; we may form our peace societies and hold our peace conferences and enact our peace laws, but peace cometh not by observation-the seat of it is within the heart-the scepter of it is wielded by the spirit. Therefore thru education in the home and school must be cultivated those virtues that make for peace-love, justice, mercy, recognition of the rights of others. These must reign in the hearts of children and rule the spirits of men in all lands before peace can reign o'er all the earth. It is well to begin with the children in the schools, before the heart is full of din and the world's fierce battles begin, when their tender feet can be more easily led into the paths of peace and their innocent souls more easily attuned to the music of peace. The lion and the lamb shall some day lie down together, but not until a little child shall lead them. For a' that, and a' that, It's coming yet, for a' that, That man to man, the warl' o'er, THE PUBLIC-HEALTH MOVEMENT This public-health movement that is enlisting the activities of men and women everywhere for the prevention of disease and the preservation of health and life-what is that but the product, too, of this growing spirit of altruism in society, government, and school, a recognition of the fundamental value of healthy bodies as a necessity for the effective application of every sort of education to the doing of a man's work in the world, of the civic duty of preserving the health and prolonging the life of all, to increase the efficiency and prolong the service of all? Disease decreases efficiency, premature death ends it ere it is well begun. What shall it profit a nation if, thru education, it gain all knowledge and all power, intellectual and spiritual, but, thru disease, lose its physical vigor, its body, by which alone it can translate these into action upon the world? Such are some of the dominant tendencies in American education shaping and molding the destiny of our democracy. There are conflicts and discords now. There shall be victorious adjustment and concord by and by, for I see in part, That all, as in some piece of art, Is toil co-operant to an end. "In the Sistine Chapel," says George Herbert Palmer, "Michelangelo has depicted the Almighty moving in clouds over the rugged earth where lies the newly created Adam, hardly aware of himself. The tips of the fingers touch, the Lord's and Adam's, and the huge frame loses its inertness and rears itself into action." Teachers of America, go forth to your work of lifting humanity into finger touch with the Almighty, unawed by fear, unrestrained by pessimism, sustained by faith in the holiness of your mission, assured that you hold the strategic point in education, which ever must be the strategic point in civilization. A MESSAGE FROM THE UNITED STATES BUREAU ELMER ELLSWORTH BROWN, UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER OF EDUCATION It was an extraordinary legacy that was left to the Bureau of Education by Commissioner William Torrey Harris. The present administration of that office has no finer responsibility than that of maintaining at its best the spirit and tradition which constitute that legacy. There are undoubtedly very few today who would accept in its entirety the philosophical system which Dr. Harris represented. There are few, indeed, who would accept unmodified his plan of educational administration. But his plan and system were the outcome of an elevated and unselfish patriotism. He was an American, and his Americanism was permeated by such devotion to the loftiest thought and the widest learning, that it can never disappear from the educational organization of this country without incalculable loss. At the opening of this report, I desire to pledge anew the office over which he presided, in loyalty to that massive and dominant moral purpose to which Dr. Harris gave his lifelong devotion, and call upon the representatives of all educational systems and educational institutions thruout the land to renew allegiance to that ideal. The President of the National Education Association has asked me to bring at this time a message from the Federal Bureau of Education, and has intimated that such a message might properly find a place on each annual program of this organization. There is an historic reason back of this suggestion. The Bureau of Education is, in a sense, the child of the National Association, having been brought into being at the immediate instance of the National Association of State and City School Superintendents, which was the forerunner of the present Department of Superintendence. My statement made in response to this call shall be a brief one; but I hope it may show that the Federal Education Office is maintaining its continuity with the work begun by Dr. Harris and his predecessors, while at the same time it is facing the new needs of these later days in ways in which there is no precedent for its guidance. The task is the double one of making an effective instrument and then of turning it to some worthy use. Within the past year the instrument, that is, the Bureau as it may be seen from without, has been greatly changed. It has left its outgrown shell by the unresting sea of Eighth and G Streets and has entered into dignified and commodious quarters under one of the Federal Government's own roofs. It has, indeed, been taken into the bosom of the national family. Its library, which had previously been reorganized, has now been rearranged in its new quarters for practical service. A vigorous new division has been erected, that of school administration, which deals particularly with matters of interest to state and city education offices. A beginning has been. made in what may be termed a field service, a service which has already engaged a good portion of the time of two specialists, those in school administration and in the work of the land-grant colleges. This service is to be further extended. Provision has been made by Congress for two important additions to the staff, namely those of Editor and of Specialist in Higher Education. The new specialist will be engaged, both at the office and in the field, with work in connection with our colleges and universities. A great campaign has recently been undertaken by friends of the Bureau with a view to the wide extension of this new service in the field, which promises to give us within the near future an instrument for more generous and far-reaching activities. It is earnestly desired and hoped that this campaign may meet with abundant success. It is not generally known that this Office is equipped with one of the most extensive educational experiment stations in the world. It is an experiment station embracing some five hundred and eighty thousand square miles of territory, with two thousand five hundred miles of sea coast, sparsely populated with some thirty thousand natives of different backward races, Indian, Aleut, and Eskimo. Such a practice school presents the white man's burden in its most concrete form, with all of the difficulties and all of the inspiring opportunities presented by the world-education movement of our time. There in Alaska the school physician and the school nurse are now going up and down, helping the people in their sicknesses, and teaching them how to live clean and wholesome lives. The girls are |