write, ther so to simplify the printed propaganda that they may read it, or better, to let them read and write the propaganda while learning. If the constructive forces of this country do not enlighten them some organization like the I.W.W. may get them in its pernicious grasp. In this illiterate mass

There is a poor blind Samson in this land,

Shorn of his strength and bound with bands of steel,

Who may in some grim revel raise his hands

And shake the pillars of the commonweal.

When five millions of men in this country have gone to defend our liberties on foreign soil, with a corresponding number of nurses, doctors, engineers, and mechanics, the conditions of life will become so altered, the need of sustaining our industries and supporting those at the front, our brave defenders, but non-producers, will be so great as to demand the efficient service of every man, woman, and child in this country. Every illiterate, whether twenty or thirty years of age, or fifty or sixty, must be educated and made available to take the places vacated by those who have gone to the front.

We owe something to the illiterate mothers of this country, whose sons have been drafted by the government and sent three thousand miles away from home to defend the flag. We owe it to them to teach them enough to enable them to read letters from those absent sons and to write letters to them, if nothing more.

We owe something-yes, everything-to the boys who have gone to give their lives for our native land. War has turned on the searchlight, like lightning's lurid glare, and has revealed conditions in education, as well as in other lines, that call for immediate remedy. Too clearly do we see the need of a relief for the illiterates when the registration cards of this country show 700,000 young men registered by mark.

When around the council table after the war they examine the workings of a democracy and an autocracy and seek to know what each has wrought among the people, one of the first things that the representatives gathered there will doubtless ask will be this question: "What are the educational benefits and status of each ?" I believe that around that table the good of the peoples of the earth will be the one thing considered. Autocracy and democracy will clash there with argument as they are clashing now with sword. Democracy will charge autocracy with militarism, with despotism, cruelty, injustice, and intrigue. Autocracy will charge us with many things. May she not have the satisfaction, in that hour, of saying that we have kept five and a half million people in ignorance!

When after the war the world looks to America for leadership, when Russia comes to study our educational conditions, shall she find hope for her millions of illiterate peasants or shall she find school doors closed to men and women and illiterates condemned to everlasting ignorance? When

Italy comes to study our institutions, shall she find a remedy for the illiteracy of her southern peninsula? Mexico will look to us for an example. Shall she catch the fire from Texas and New Mexico to educate her illiterate peons? Porto Rico, Hawaii, the islands of the sea will look to this nation for their ideal of democracy. Shall they find a democracy founded on the sinking sand of the intelligence of part of the people, or founded on the solid rock of the enlightenment of all?

CHARACTER EDUCATION

MILTON FAIRCHILD, NATIONAL INSTITUTE FOR MORAL INSTRUCTION, WASHINGTON, D.C.

These distressing times call for constructive thinking rather than for fault-finding. No matter what the neglects of the past have been, the school must now plan to furnish the education which the children of the United States, living in these modern times, really need. The basis of the life-career for each child is character, interpreted in a broad sense, and this basis must be furnisht by education. I like the term "character education" much better than "moral education," because it is not subject to misunderstandings and is a broader term. The term "character education" suggests and implies the unfolding of the child's better self by the processes of growth and under the stimulation and guidance of the teacher. The purpose of character education should be the growth of the child out of its weaknesses and crudities and superficialities of character into strength, depth, breadth, and harmony of character.

The scope of character education is indicated by the following list of fields of thought as subdivisions of the general, inclusive term: (1) instruction (formal and informal) in the wisdom of human moral experience; (2) formation of opinions as to morality on the part of children themselves; (3) the development of motives for right conduct; (4) conduct-resolves by children; (5) training (teacher and self-training) in habits of right conduct. This is undiscovered territory. Not a human being living knows much about character education. We have various theories as to how results in character development can be secured; there have been "working hypotheses" announst as supported by modern thought in the human sciences, but no one has gone thru the scientific process by which these theories and hypotheses are verified and proved to produce results.

And yet the present emergency in the life of the nation necessitates an improvement in this phase of education, and the demand will surely be made that ways and means be provided in the public schools for producing the strength, refinement, and righteousness of character which are needed among the masses of the people, both rich and poor, of a republic. The United States of America has become a world-power and a leader in

international politics. This fact brings to us greatly increast responsibilities as a nation. In a republic-democracy the purposes and ambitions of the masses of the people are the purposes and ambitions of the government. We are arriving at a time when the mass-judgments of our people will be influentially exprest. The leadership and control of the "intellectuals" will be challenged, in matters of government, industry, finance, social distinctions, and education, by the masses on the basis of the purposes in life and the ambitions which have control over the masses. We shall not be able to get the nation, as an organization of millions of people, to bear these new responsibilities successfully unless we succeed in developing, as an expression of the interest and the right which the nation has in the character development of its children, much more influential methods of character education in the public schools.

You will recall that at the Detroit meeting of the Department of Superintendence an award of $5000 was offered for the best children's code of morals. A certain business man, who does not wish to be under the suspicion of seeking personal glory and therefore insists on withholding his name, offered that $5000. He believes that the character education of all the children of the Republic is a necessity as a guaranty of permanent and progressive life on the part of the nation. Each state in the Union appointed thru its state superintendent at least one "code writer" in that "National $5000 Morality Codes Competition," and more populous states appointed several. There were seventy code writers, and they workt for one year, with consultation as the chief principle of their work. Probably ten thousand people took part in deciding for these code writers what moral ideas ought to be inculcated in the minds of our nation's children. Fiftytwo succeeded in completing morality codes in this competition, and others will write later. The award was made by three judges-Professor George Trumbull Ladd, of Yale University, chairman; Justice Mahlon Pitney, of the Supreme Court of the United States; and Mrs. Phillip North Moore, president of the National Council of Women-to a code written by Professor Wm. J. Hutchins, of Ohio. There are other codes almost if not quite as good as the Hutchins code. The process of revision before publication has been started, and each author will submit his code to public criticism during this period of revision. The final result will be a body of codes on which we educators can rely as a guide to the content of moral instruction and to the conduct which it is right for the children of our nation to be brought up to fulfil.

In the process of developing this morality-codes competition the business-man "donor" discovered that the educators were in doubt as to methods of character education, and therefore he offered, again thru the National Institution for Moral Instruction, an award of $20,000 for the best method of character education in public schools. This is by far the largest award ever offered in education and signifies the earnestness of the

appeal from the general public that the schools develop their procedure in character education into effectiveness for the sake of the nation of the future. There will be an interstate competition between teams of nine research collaborators, one team in each state, and the award will be divided, $4000 to the chairman and $2000 to each of the collaborators of the winning team. As a result of this group thinking we shall have forty-eight great plans for character education. All these plans will be made available to the state, city, county, and town superintendents thruout the nation, and to all who as students of education wish to make a special investigation of this field.

After the specifications for the year's research for the best methods of character education in public schools had been completed, the generosity and determination of the donor of these enormous awards was further exprest in an offer to pay the expenses of the preparation of a special library of extracts from the best writers on education, which should facilitate the work of these groups of collaborators by giving them a good start. The "Donor's Library on Character Education" is nearing completion under the editorship of Professor Harris L. Latham and President Charles McKenney. It will be composed of about three volumes of extracts on character education. One set will be given to the group of collaborators in each state for use during the research year. Then in each state the library will go to the office of the state superintendent, to be lent to superintendent and teachers as they may have need. The chief and immediate purpose of the library is to help the research collaborators discover the best possible ways and means for character education in the public schools.

After these forty-eight great plans for character education in public schools have been submitted they will be studied, and certain verifying experiments will be made by qualified specialists. These will be made under normal public-school conditions and will be conducted for the sake of putting to the test the plans which seem likely to produce the best results. The recommendations which will come finally to the superintendents and to students of education will be worthy of serious consideration because they will have been arrived at by true scientific processes. The National Institution for Moral Instruction stands for cooperation in research among advanst students in the field of character education, in order that the practical, verified wisdom of educators may be accumulated as the basis for improvements in the service which schools render the children of the nation in their character development. Your cooperation is most heartily desired in these undertakings.

WAR-MODIFIED EDUCATION AND THE RISE OF THE COMMON PEOPLE THRU IT

A. E. WINSHIP, "JOURNAL OF EDUCATION," BOSTON, MASS.

This world-war is modifying everything and everyone in America. Nothing will ever be as it has been, and no one will ever again be as he has been.

The war is modifying us financially, industrially, commercially, morally, patriotically, politically, religiously, and educationally. And all the modification is for the uplift of the common people, for the toning up of the common people.

I was privileged to be present recently at the conference of 122 coal operators of West Virginia and Mr. Lawson, who represented Dr. Garfield and President Wilson.

Kendall White made the great address of the occasion. He is the lawyer for the Standard Oil Company, which is supposed to mean that he is one of the big lawyers of West Virginia. He devoted himself to an attempt to impress upon those coal operators that this is a war of the common people, by the common people, and for the common people. He called attention to the fact that Lloyd George represents the common people of England, and that more and more President Wilson is representing the common people of the United States. He said: "It is not a theory, but a condition, and you must face it squarely. You should adjust all the conditions of your mines-working and living conditions-never forgetting that you will soon have to give a report on your stewardship."

I have never heard a speech like that from such a man as Kendall White. I have read something closely akin to that from Charles M. Schwab.

Democracy is of and by and for the common people just as autocracy is for aristocracy. When we make the world safe for democracy we make it a common-people's world.

The modification of this war is greater than we can even imagine. Take the religious modification, for instance. We have not realized how many of us had our highest test of religious love by devilish hate of other religions. Who can conceive of the American Y.M.C.A. offering its hut to the Knights of Columbus for the celebration of mass and administering of the communion? And when the Knights of Columbus have their hut ready, they in turn invite their Israelitist "brethren" to administer to their Jewish worshipers in a Roman Catholic "temple." And on that evermemorable day in April, 1917, when the United States Senate voted us into the world-war, and a Democrat from the Gulf pledged a consecrated South to this war, and a rock-ribbed Republican from Massachusetts solemnly dedicated his party and his state to the arming of this war, and a senator from New York spoke for the devotion of his state and of his people, a reverend hush fell upon the reverend senators as the hour closed