THE SCHOOL OF TOMORROW

The Institute for Public Service has rendered the cause of education in the United States incalculable service, a more service than we have known to be rendered in any similar way by any other organization.

In common with school people generally we were outraged by the prospectus put out by those who stood sponsors for "The School of Tomorrow." For three reasons we declined to comment upon it, although we were persistently urged to do so.

First, we did not like to appear to object

to "The School of Tomorrow" because of its almost infamous attack on the public schools of today.

Second, we were unwilling to appear to be among those who seem deeply prejudiced

against Foundations.

Third, our chief reason was that we had no adequate data with which to expose the colossal ignorance of whoever issued that "Prospectus." We knew from extended personal observation all that is exposed in the article we use from the Institute for Public Service this week, but we could only present it as opinion. Hence our satisfaction in presenting the general statements from that "Survey" of the Institute for Public Service.

We hope no one will be content with our selection therefrom, for the "Rainbow Promises of Progress in Education" should be in the hands of every teacher and school officer in the United States. Every editor of the religious and agricultural press at least should have this open on his desk whenever he thinks of education.

or know what is being said and written in the name of science.

The best composite we have seen is in some "Suggestions of Modern Science Concerning Education." It is a group of four notable lectures by a biologist, a psychologist, an educationist, and a physician.

No one of them is pedagogical in his point of view; no one of them is traditional or artificial. They are four scientists-men skilled each in his own science. We have read with much care and with compelling interest the lecture by Herbert S. Jennings, the biologist, and have read into the other three parts, so that we feel justified in saying that every school man and woman needs to read these four lectures. If, however, your nervous system has been shattered or strained by what you have previously read or heard, fight shy of this book. It will not be a "Safety First" recreation. Here is a sentence which you better become used to before you go further: "Why, during the years when life is largely sensation, do we screw our children into desks five hours a day; if variety of type is desirable, why strive for uniformity; if surplus energy is necessary to further evolution, why not conserve that wonderful superabundant vitality of childhood?"

It is a wonderfully fascinating book whether you accept it or reject it, whether it inspires. you or irritates you.

No. matter what ill luck Atlantic City may have as to weather from February 25 to March 2, there will be no splashing in slush.

THE RESERVATION NIGHTMARE Secretary Crabtree asks that we do not make early reservations in Atlantic City hotels. This will probably become a rule hereafter. There is not a commercial city in the United States in which the leading hotels combined will agree to reserve twelve, ten, eight or six months in advance, 6,000, or 5,000, or 3,000 rooms for a mid-winter meeting. Many hotels pay no attention even to a telegraphic request for a room, even twenty-four hours ahead, unless they recognize the request as from a guest, frequent or occasional.

In mid-February last winter, with no convention in session, we went to four large hotels ready to accept any kind of a room and pay any kind of a price, and were everywhere told there was probably no room in any hotel in the city, and a lodging house was the only possibility. It is so most of the time all winter.

The six thousand attendants upon the meeting of superintendents make a greater draft upon hotels than thirty thousand attendants upon the July meeting.

There are probably too many "allied" meetings with the Department of Superintendence. This is not only true as regards the hotels, but they multiply sessions and divert interest from the problems of the superintendents.

There are innumerable problems facing the

National Education Association and it is the part of wisdom to recognize this. This is but one of many.

Atlantic City has the best winter climate north of Florida and east of the Rocky Mountains.

THE CHICO CONFERENCE

Jasper L. McBrien's "Country Life Drive" meeting at Chico, California, was a famous success in its representative character; in its singleness of purpose; in the intensity of its "drive"; in the heartiness of the hospitality of the citizens.

To Captain Allison Ware, United States Army, president of the state normal school, who was present because his orders to report for duty left him at home until after the "drive," was responsible for the initial action, but all conceded to Lura Sawyer Oak the success of the preliminary drive for the entertainment, the real drive; but all Chico and the state normal school trustees and faculty lined up loyally behind the president and head of the Country Life extension department of the school in royal hospitality.

THE EXPECTED HAS HAPPENED The press of All-America on November 30 carried this paragraph:

New York, Nov. 30.-Opposition to the Gary system in the public schools of this city, which Mayor-elect Hylan made an issue in the recent municipal campaign, was put into effective form today when the Tammany majority in the board of aldermen voted to abolish the $10,000 a year position of William Wirt, educational consultant, who was brought here to install the work-study-play plan in the schools. We have no means of knowing all that will happen to the schools in New York City that have heartily accepted the Gary system, but it is evident that a good deal will happen to the Gary plan in that city.

Now that the end has come we can say without suspicion of meddling that we have never been professionally reconciled to have Mr. Wirt, as an educational expert, hired by a non-educational department of the city government to make an educational demonstration. Further, we have felt from the start that it was unfortunate for him to be paid for ten weeks in the year the same salary as is provided for a superintendent for fifty-two weeks. in the year. Further, that New York's educational interests are too great to be a side show to a city nearly a thousand miles away; and further, that Mr. Wirt has too great an educational mission to justify risking its suc

cess on the moral certainty of failure in both cities by such a combination.

We most ardently hope that Mr. Wirt will now complete the demonstration which was so well begun in Gary before it was complicated with New York politics.

ATLANTIC CITY HOTELS

Any hotel in Atlantic City is good enough for anybody, but the largest is the Traymore, than which there is nothing better anywhere. Because of its vast lobby it will be the headquarters without designation, but it can be enjoyed just as fully by those who are in other hotels as by its guests.

GRADING NEIGHBORHOOD CONDITIONS By far the best scale we have seen for grading neighborhood conditions is prepared by Dr. J. Harold Williams, director of Research, Whittier State School, Whittier, California. It is based upon the following items: 1, necessities; 2, neatness; 3, size; 4, parental conditions; 5, parental supervision. Each item is graded on a scale of five points and the item scores added to obtain the Home Index.

Whoever is to undertake a careful study of neighborhood conditions will make a serious mistake if he does not send to Mr. Williams for his pamphlet of explicit directions, fully diagramed and charted.

Thirty-six high schools in California have abolished German studies and High School Inspector Will C. Wood prophesies the universal abolition of the study, at least until after the war closes.

The State Department of Education of New Jersey is advocating a minimum salary in the state of $650. Nothing reckless about that, but it sets a new state standard.

Humiliating as it is to have any non-patriotic teachers in the public schools, it is cause for rejoicing that, with rare exception, the teachers are intensely loyal.

New York City schools, teachers and pupils. bought $31,386,900 worth $31,386,900 worth of Liberty Loan bonds. Not much like disloyalty!

It did seem as though New York City had educational troubles enough without the "traitor" episode.

Kenneth Richmond says that the only safe mooring-lines for a truth are its relation to a universe of truths.

Something will begin to happen to the Gary system in New York about January 1. Rousseau said that natural growth, rightly conditioned, is the only education.

National Education Association June 30 to July 6, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

It was "trinitrotoluol" that wrecked Halifax. January 28, Child Labor Day in Schools. January 27, Child Labor Sunday.

If the world is to be made safe for democracy, German militarism must be crushed; but to make the world safe for democracy is no more important than to make democracy safe for the world. But if democracy is to be safe for the world, democracy must achieve social justice; and as I see it the chief responsibility for that achievement is with the high school.

The major premise in my argument is fear. I am afraid for the future of our country.

It looks as plain to me as daylight that unless, to be concrete and specific, we settle the growing dispute between capital and labor, peaceably, and with reason and justice, we shall inevitably settle it with violence and bloodshed. More glaring inequalities of wealth and opportunity have never existed anywhere in all the world than exist in America today-unless we except such periods as those of Nero and Louis XV.

ever.

A bad distribution of wealth is dangerous enough in any event; but when the victims have been taught the creed of democracy for a hundred years the situation becomes volcanic. It wasn't so much the slavery of the South that brought on the Civil War as the anti-slavery ideals of the North. Without those ideals slavery might have gone on forBut the ideals planted a mine under the system. And likewise it occurs to all sorts of peopie-preachers, sociologists, cabinet members, and I. W. W.'s-that the present industrial situation isn't fair. It's more than unfair; it's undemocratic; and in my humble opinion whoever doubts that something will be done about it in the next twentyfive or fifty years misconceives the viability of democratic ideals and the temper of the under layers of American citizenry.

Unless I am greatly mistaken the social pulse of our body politic shows more fever than it did. twenty years ago a dangerous and gradually increasing degree of fever. And after the war will it be greater or less with the great war debt to pay and no undeveloped land to which labor can escape from intensive industry?

So much for my major premise.

Next: How can these problems be solved and the tragedy which I fear be averted? How can we secure a peaceful, rational evolution of social justice instead of a violent revolution? The question is half answered when I restate it: Who is going to solve our social problems? You anticipate the answer: The people! In a government like ours the people themselves must solve their social problems if they are ever solved at all. I can hardly keep up with your thinking now if I hasten to say that the people cannot be expected to solve problems that they know little or nothing about. They must therefore be taught, and the high school is the institution that must do it. Unless in the high

Read at the North Dakota Education Association,

school the rising generation of American citizens are taught the economic principles underlying taxation, immigration, trust legislation, unearned increment, collective bargaining, stock watering, and a dozen other problems equally vital, they will blunder in their attempts to solve such problems; and social distress, perhaps even social disaster, will result. The people must know at least enough economics to know which leaders to follow; just as they must know enough physiology to employ a physician instead of a quack.

Plutocracy versus democracy will be the great issue in America for a generation or so to come. For instance, who is going to pay the war debt? Will taxes for that purpose redistribute wealth or concentrate it? There is no doubt which resulted from the tax system by which the Civil War debt was paid. Well, whether the war debt will be paid principally by the excessively rich, or principally by the middle classes and the poor, will depend largely upon what the owners of the goose that lays the golden egg can succeed in making the people believe about killing her.

And for my part I believe the high school has been providentially raised up for that very purpose. Observe its phenomenal growth. In 1870 there were but 160 high schools in the whole country. Today there are 15,000; and there is every indication that the rural school consolidation movement will nearly double that number in twenty-five years more. Do you think the American people under God have built such an institution as that in such a time as this to teach Latin, Algebra and Ancient History?

The present Junior High School movement ought to prove a most strategic opportunity for the camel to get his nose into the tent, in fact his head and shoulders. The Junior High School avows its purpose to set aside the traditions that have hooped about the seventh, eighth and ninth grades for generations. The organization is new, the aim is new, the method of teaching is to be revised, and a thoroughly modified course of study arranged. So long as the old eight-four school rolled on in its accustomed groove from year to year there seemed no chance of getting more than a half year of badly taught economics into the twelfth grade. But now that the roof is off and the partitions out there ought to be some chance of getting something adequate into the ninth grade. Another encouraging feature of the situation is that practically everybody who writes on the Junior High School curriculum advocates a course in elementary social science for the ninth year.

So far I have been able to find but one textbook in Elementary Social Science designed for this grade, viz., that by Leavett and Brown. This book devotes the first half to chapters discussing land, labor, capital, management, production and dis

tribution. So much for economics. The work appeals to me as too abstract for children of that age. I am not sure that that classic analysis will function in the minds of such children. My second criticism is that the book is too small. Only seventy-two pages are devoted to this economic half. I infer from the psychological theories of Dr. G. Stanley Hall that for pupils of that age a text ought to be very rich in content material. The second half of this book contains a chapter on some of the abstract fundamentals of sociology, and three or four chapters on such sociological problems as education, crime, health, poverty, morality, etc. While this book appeals to me as a very commendable effort to contribute to the cause, I think it leaves much still to be done.

If I were to offer my suggestion as to the outline of such a course it would be to build it around some of the most obvious and apparent of our concrete problems, such as immigration, monopolies, labor organization, rural betterment, the city slum, taxation, the excess of middle men, education, etc., etc. I should weave in a large amount of concrete material of three sorts, viz., descriptive, historical and biographical. For instance, in connection with immigration I should acquaint the children so far as possible with facts about immigrants; who they are, how they live, where they come from, where they settle, etc., etc. By the use of pictures, stories and personal acquaintance I should make the subject as concrete and perceptual as I could. I should extend that description backward in point of time so as to make it a history of immigration. I should refer to such persons as Jane Addams and others who have served the immigrants after their arrival here.

It is a mistake to suppose that economics is effectively taught unless it implants in the minds of the children certain sound economic principles. A lot of nonsense is written about teaching children to think. It's better to be right than to be original, particularly when a nation's future is at stake.

The public mind is honeycombed with accepted principles that are false. We are as superstitious and ignorant about things economic as our greatgrandfathers were superstitious and ignorant about things medical. Teaching children to think for themselves amounts to letting them reason from these false premises to destructive conclusions. Social science teaching needs to lead to sound principles, epigrammatically stated, sometimes symbolically presented, and deeply imbedded in the adolescent need.

There are a score of social causes to which Americans ought to feel a strong allegiance. The cause, for instance, of free school clinics, the cause of better treatment of juvenile offenders, the cause of child labor. Now in each of such causes, and many others, there have been workers, crusaders, whose service has entitled them to a place among our national heroes. For example, there was Zachariah Brockway of Elmira, New York, the leader of American prison reform. And of these a surprising proportion have been women. Biographies of social leaders and reformers constitute an almost undreamed-of mine of wealth for developing

in our youth the sort of patriotism that will yield the heroic exploits of peace.

This is a time when teachers, and especially educators of influence, ought to double their diligence in adjusting the school to the social needs of the immediate future. In the long run we are in more danger from the plutocrat at home than we are from the autocrat abroad. And while others are fighting the one over seas, let us show our farsighted patriotism by refusing to be obsessed entirely by the war, and pushing steadily forward the fundamental works of peace. Such is our only excuse for remaining safe at home. And be sure that when the war is over we shall need the defences of adequate education as never before.

AUTHORS WHO ARE A PRESENT DELIGHT-(XXI)

Continued from page 629.

his wife. Don't you suppose her family "cursed him out" because he did not take up something more practical? A preliminary career as a brewer would have more speedily brought him a peerage, or more correctly a beerage

In England wealth acquired by beer Will often make a man a peer: Why should not then the ancient Peerage Be very properly termed the Beerage? Alfred Noyes, finding himself equipped with an unusual facility in conjuring rhymes and rhythms, and hitting upon popular topics, had some reason to take up the calling of a poet as the mainstay of his existence. It was noyesed abroad that he was going to follow that profession and his success was prodigious and unheard of. Reports of his tremendous earning capacity were cabled to this country and, when thus heralded, he appeared here, he was regarded as a phenomenon; everyone wanted to see and listen to a poet who could earn his bread and butter by cantering on his Pegasus. It probably made little difference to those who admired success in money-getting whether he appeared on the platform mounted on that historic steed in the guise of a cart-horse or a racer. It was certainly clever advertising for the "Land of the Almighty Dollar."

cur

When Mr., or rather Dr. Noyes came to Boston the first time, a dinner was arranged for him at the City Club. A local literarian (who shall be nameless) was called upon to speak, and arising with due solemnity, protested against the laxity of our Customs-not manners—which, while protecting the manufacturers of chemicals and other commodities by high or prohibitive duties, absolutely neglected the interests of the creators of poems. "Why should there not be an importation tax." he asked, "on English Bards? Here is Mr. Noyes, whose very name is a emp und of positive and negative, arriving on our shores, preceded by a reputation as the one poet of modern times who makes poetry pay, who from the beginning made poetry pay,