is what Jefferson had in mind when he said that "all men are born equal," not with the same cerebral power, but with a chance to develop the best that is in them.

Sixth, the Junior High School gives the adolescent the opportunity for self-realization. This is the keynote of the whole question. The normal boy or girl of fourteen wants to "find himself," to realize his own possibilities, and to adjust himself to his environment. Often the process is difficult and painful, and it is the sacred obligation of the teacher to be the guiding star. We should surround the boy with such a system that he can "check up," as it were, his own daily growth, and thus remedy his defects and shortcomings, while he sees himself increasing mentally and morally. As Xenophon said: "No man is as happy as he who perceives his own growth." The Junior High School plan, it seems to me, offers the best chance for this realization of self. The boy does not feel insignificant as one of the "baby class," but develops manliness and self-confidence at exactly the right period of his life. This means less elimination from school, from whatever cause, and, con

r

sequently, a vitalized pedagogical process through

out.

Someone has said that there is nothing new in education. Rightly interpreted, this holds true. The great basic principles as evolved by Socrates, Plato and Aristotle still remain, but the methods whereby these are to be attained must be adjusted to present conditions. The Junior High School is one of these modern methods. It is not a panacea for all the pedagogical ills, but, after practical tests, it can now stand firmly as a successful mode of treatment. The needs of the adolescent boy or girl are great and must be supplied quickly unless deleterious effects are to follow. For this reason, then, the foremost educators of the country have championed the adoption of the new plan, and, indeed, it has been predicted that it will sweep the country within a few years. Let opponents of the plan recall the words of Professor Giddings: "The normally constituted individual returns to society with usury, the gifts with which he has been endowed, and this truth will be the starting point of the ethical teaching of future years." Brockton School Helper.

The United States has resolved that in the case of her own armies the venereal disease curse shall be avoided, that the soldier shall be protected from the scarlet woman, and that the community shall be protected from the loose members of the army. There is therefore a systematic attempt on the one hand to repress prostitution, and on the other hand, to organize social life in a normal manner around all of the training camps.

The young men who are now being trained in the ninety camps or more throughout the United States are probably the finest company of young men that were ever brought together anywhere. They are conspicuous in any group of people for their size, apparent strength, and development. They are also considerably above the average in intelligence and moral purpose. But it must be remembered that youth is passionate, and that the conversation of groups. of young men is always likely to run to sex themes, and we must remember with Kipling that "single men in barracks don't grow into. plaster saints."

However, the protection of the men from the venereal peril is only one of the purposes for which this work is being undertaken. They go forth as soldiers of democracy. They must feel that they represent the country and that the country is behind them in what they are. doing, and that the community where they are placed is genuinely interested in their welfare.

The organization of the community to secure these ends has been entrusted by the war and navy departments to the Playground and

It is put

Recreation Association of America. ting a local secretary into each community adjacent to a military camp, and this secretary is seeking to organize all the forces of the community so that the life of the soldiers on leave may be spent under as wholesome conditions as possible.

Besides the Playground Association, the Y. W. C. A. is putting in one or two extra secretaries in each community in order to organize the girls into patriotic leagues and other clubs, to keep them employed and also to establish natural and wholesome relationships with young men and the soldiers. It is also keeping a list of rooms where mothers, wives and sweethearts of soldiers can be entertained and where they may be visited under wholesome conditions.

Most of the larger churches are also employing one or two extra pastors to work with the army. There is every effort to get the young men to attend the churches in the town of the denomination to which they belong. and there are usually extra services for the soldiers alone, with special dinners Sunday evening. Nearly all of the young men who come to the Sunday service in the morning are asked home to dinner by members of the church.

In many cases the Y. M. C. A. is opening a special building for the entertainment of the men who wish to spend a night in town, or have friends who come to see them.

Most of the clubs such as the Elks, the Masons, and the Knights of Columbus, and others, are also

The Playground and Recreation Association of America is serving as the co-ordinating and organizing force for all of these activities, and is besides putting in each camp a leader of community singing, and is employing police women to protect town girls and to ward off any menace from commercialized vice.

They are also organizing baseball and football games for the men, and in some cases they have put up special club buildings for them provided with a gymnasium, swimming pool, athletic grounds, and other facilities.

As the men come to realize what is being done for them, and the noble spirit of good fellowship and genuine interest which is everywhere being

and almost like soldiers on a great crusade.

The Playground and Recreation Association is seeking to raise three dollars for every enlisted inan in order to provide these recreative facilities. At first thought this may seem like a large amount, as it will probably require nearly four millions of dollars. But when we consider that the government is spending twenty billions this first year, which is probably twenty thousand dollars for every man that we shall have in action this year, and inore than one thousand dollars for every man we shall have in action during the entire war, it would not appear that the three dollars which is being spent to keep the men in condition and give them a fighting spirit is an excessive amount. In some sections the entire amount needed has been over-subscribed by the locality.

None can see

RACE QUESTION

[An open letter to the college men of the South from the University Commission on Southern Race Questions.]

The Commission wishes to address the college men on what it considers the most immediate pressing problem of the South, and one of the most important for the nation, namely, Negro Migration. The present migration of the negro is not an anomalous phenomenon in human affairs. The economic and social laws that affect the lives and actions of white men produce practically the same effects upon the negro. It should not be surprising, therefore, to find him obeying so promptly and in such large numbers the economic law of demand and supply. There was no extensive migration until the industrial centres, facing a dangerous shortage of labor, owing to the complete shutting off of the European sources of supply, turned to the South, where large sources were available. And so they sent their agents with very alluring promises and liberally used the negro press, hand-bills, letters, lecturers, and other means designed quickly to uproot the negro and draw him to the railroads, factories, and mines. where his labor is sorely needed. The dollar has lured the negro to the East and North, as it has lured the white man even to the most inaccessible and forbidding regions of the earth. But the human being is moved and held, not by money alone. Birthplace, home-ties, family, friends, associations and attachments of numerous kinds, fair

treatment, opportunity to labor and enjoy the legitimate fruits of labor, assurance of evenhanded justice in the courts, good educational facilities, sanitary living conditions, tolerance, and sympathy, these things and others like them make an even stronger appeal to the human mind and heart than does money.

The South cannot compete on a financial basis with other sections of the country for the labor of the negro, but the South can easily keep her negroes against all allurements, if she will give them a larger measure of those things that human beings hold dearer than material goods. Generosity begets gratitude, and gratitude grips and holds man more powerfully than hooks of steel. It is axiomatic that fair dealing, sympathy, patience, tolerance, and other human virtues benefit those who exercise them even more than the beneficiaries of them. It pays to be just and kind, both spiritually and materially. Surely the South has nothing to lose and much to gain by adopting an attitude like that indicated above. (Signed) E. C. Branson, University of North Carolina; R. P. Brooks, University of Georgia; James J. Doster, University of Alabama; James W. Farr, University of Florida; James D. Hoskins, University of Tennessee; W. M. Hunley, V. M. I.; W. L. Kennon, University of Mississippi; Josiah Morse, University of South Carolina; W. O. Scroggs, Louisiana State University; W. S. Sutton, University of Texas; D. Y. Thomas, University of Arkansas.

The department concentrated the work of every institute upon vital information about the needs of the rural schools of North Dakota, about the recent legislative provision for remedying the wrongs and strengthening the weak places. There was expert demonstration of the uses of the oil stove for luncheons and community service, and there was music at every session.

One day of the drive was for the school

War Charity Fraud...

Oregon Wins

The Week in Review.

A Resolve for the New Year.....

Loyalty or Disloyalty..

Protect Patriotic Collections.

Daily Bible Readings for School and Home-(XIII.)

Health Problems in Education-(II)..

Motion Pictures.

A Loyal School..

Book Table..

Educational News..

America First!

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The drive idea is contagious and education is catching the fervor of it. A great demonstration was that of the North Dakota drive for better rural schools and better country life. The State Department of Education enlisted the active support of the State Board of Education, the State Normal School, the Agricultural College, the School of Education in the State University, and the Smith-Lever workers. All of the fifty-three county superintendents, most of them very heartily, entered into the drive.

The State Department of Education arranged the dates of all county institutes so that they came between October 1 and November 16, allowing one week for the State Association. The department selected, in a general way, the conductors and assistant conductors of these institutes, drawing upon the normal schools, Agricultural College, School of Education in the University, and some of the most experienced county superintendents.

superintendent in the forenoon, while the regular institute work went on; but the afternoon was a joint session of the directors and teachers, under the leadership of the State Department. Usually there was also an evening session of the rally.

At each of these meetings the state superintendent, his assistant or deputy, stated clearly the aims, purposes and ambitions of the department for rural schools. The slogan everywhere and always was: "An equal chance for country and city children"; not by lowering in any particular the opportunities for city children, but by bringing up the opportunity for country children.

cent.

These inequalities were emphasized every time. Of city girls, ninety-four per complete the eighth grade; of country girls, thirty-six per cent.; of city boys, sixty-eight per cent.; of country boys, twenty-four per cent.; of city girls, thirty-four per cent. complete a high school course; of country girls, six per cent.; of city boys, twenty-one per cent.; of country boys, three per cent. Why should thirty-seven per cent. more city girls complete the eighth grade than city boys? Why should more than fifty per cent. more city girls have a high school education than city boys? But the tragedy is that almost three times as many city as country children complete the eighth grade, and six times as many have a high school education.

There is the same appalling discrepancy in the education and training of teachers in city and country, and in the average attendance in city and country. city and country. All these were emphasized by the representative of the department, as were the proposed remedies. Of course, the one great remedy is the Consolidated School, and in its absence, is the standardizing of the small schools.

The culmination of the drive in this rally day was the presence of the Governor in twenty of the counties; of the editor of the Journal of Education, Boston, in thirty-one; of Hon. Jasper L. McBrien, of the United States Bureau of of Education, in

twelve;

County Superintendent Lee Driver of Randolph County, Indiana, in five, and Mr. Swain of Minnesota in five. There was also a leader in community singing who "sure did" raise the roof with patriotic songs.

Every speaker every time hewed to the line; confined himself to the one topic assigned for everybody to emphasize. The one in insisting

Governor was second to no

upon music in the schools; upon the hot luncheon; upon community leadership; upon a county school nurse; upon a consolidated school when possible, and upon high standardization of all schools which are not consolidated.

some

Of course, it would be natural if county superintendents did not like to be told when to hold an institute, whom to have as conductor, not to fritter away time on local episodes, and not to have any part in the great rally meeting; but such was the glory of the "drive" that before it was over even those who had chafed in advance were in the swing of the thing most heartily.

Eighty per cent. of the children of North Dakota are in rural districts.

Practically 6,000 teachers of rural schools were in these institutes and rallies, and most of the 6,000 directors were there on rally day. One man came in his machine ninety miles to be in attendance and many of them came Two more than fifty miles by machine. teachers, a young woman and her brother, came forty-five miles in the saddle. The intelligent devotion and the permanent inspiration from this drive will be as great, relatively, as the result of any of the war drives.

About forty of the fifty-three counties will have a county nurse hereafter, and this itself is a wonderful result of the drive. But there will be much consolidation-and already North Dakota has 447 consolidated schools-and much standardization. There will be victrolas and hot luncheons in almost every school, to the credit of the drive.

INTENSIFIED EFFICIENCY

The Federal Board for Vocational Education has in four months demonstrated the possibility of governmental efficiency that is most gratifying. Dr. Charles A. Prosser, the director, has rendered the government an incalculable service by demonstrating that high efficiency is possible in public service.

The war has fortunately brought home to the country both our need for vocationallytrained men and women and our lack of facilities for training men and women vocationally. The war found the United States vocationally unprepared. In the four months since its organization, the federal board records the following steps of progress: Acceptance of the vocational education act by forty-six of the forty-eight states; approval of plans for vocational educational systems for twenty-two states, involving an expenditure this year of more than $850,000 of federal money, and at least an equal amount of state money; regionalizing of the United States for administrative purposes, and establishing working relations with state school officials; establishment of than fifty night classes to train radio and buzzer operators for the United States army, with an enrollment of more than 3,000, and still grow

more

WHEW! IS IT TRUE?

Is the Journal of Education under suspicion of disloyalty? Has our weekly stand for patriotic devotion been of no avail? Are we a slacker? A pacifist? Pro-German?

In the issue of November 29 we said: "It is as useless to ask who was to blame for injecting the Gary issue into the New York election as to ask who is to blame for this world war which has ruined Belgium, made a Mexico out of Russia, and done a multitude of other damnable things."

New York, December 6, 1917. Dear Mr. Winship: It is astonishing to find by your paper that you do not place the blame for the war where common consent places it, and it is regrettable that a paper, which will doubtless influence many teachers, should hesitate for an instant upon such a matter.

Are you willing that children should be taught that "it is useless to ask who is to blame for this world war"? I can hardly believe so, and I hope your statement is due to haste in writing.

Yours is one of the journals which should say the things which are to be taught to children, because many teachers will reiterate your views in the classVery truly yours, Amasa Walker.

rooms.

Lest Mr. Walker's interpretation of our remark should be contagious, we would like to say that we have not the slightest trace of suspicion as to the responsibility for this horrible World War. We have no more doubt about the responsibility of the Kaiser and his advisers for every drop of blood shed, for every dollar spent, for the diversion of every day's labor from legitimate activity, than we have for the responsibility for the Lusitania outrage. What was our mind, subconsciously, when we wrote, was the impossibility of satisfying German sympathizers who persist in placing the responsibi'ity elsewhere. It did not occur to us that our opinion as to the responsibility could be questioned.

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