Chart VI shows a study of three types of grade schools and three types of high schools. The chart is constructed on the principle used for the preceding charts. Some schools in all the groups have space for instruction above the 50 per cent line except grade schools of the old type. Of all the buildings examined those of two classes stand out as preeminently the best -the one-story grade school and the so-called junior high school.

Why is this so?

It is because these two types have been most carefully studied by our leading superintendents and our best schoolhouse architects. It is because

MASSACHUSETTS BOARD OF EDUCATION

OFFICE OF THE BUSINESS AGENT

GRAPHIC COMPARISON OF AREAS IN RECENT MASSACHUSETTS HIGH SCHOOL BUILDINGS

they are a new type of school building and there are no bad habits of planning these buildings to be overcome. The superintendent and the committee have an open mind with regard to them, and the architect is allowed to carry out a building not planned on conventional lines with the usual extravagances. The possibility for improvement in the other types suggests that the time has arrived for getting together over the problems involved.

Here in general is the field to be covered.

1. The determination of best percentages and the adoption of minimum standards.

2. The unification of state regulations.

3. The investigation of building materials with special regard to the substitutes.

4. The problem of obtaining the greatest possible use from each part of the building. This fourth problem obviously depends upon the superintendent for its solution, being a problem of administration to be solved after the architect has done his share by providing the good school building for the good school.

To us this seems a fitting opportunity to lay out a national system to take up this work and make it of practical use for all parts of the country. We suggest the desirability of a general committee acting under the Department of Administration, a consulting body which should oversee the work, and a subcommittee in each state to supply information to every town or city which is about to build a school and to help them with advice as to the

NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION
DEPARTMENT OF SCHOOL ADMINISTRATION

COMMITTEE ON STANDARDIZATION SCHOOLHOVSE PLANNING AND CONSTRUCTION
PERCENTOGRAPH OF SIX TYPES OF SCHOOL BUILDINGS SHOWING INSTRUCTION AREA

COPYRIGHT BY YAYING COOPER

CHART VI

plans of school buildings. We suggest that there should be an inspection of school buildings and school-building plans under a definite questionnaire and schedule to be prepared by the general committee, and that the results of these inspections should be tabulated and published.

Now the duty before the National Education Association is to educate the country so that it will demand better-planned and more economical schoolhouses. We must consider how we may apply the standards of the National Education Association to future buildings. We must continue to build schoolhouses and they must not be overcrowded. We must have minimum standards which architect and superintendent will strive to raise and improve. This work should be carried on in a spirit of mutual helpfulness; any superintendent, committee, or architect should be able to turn to the committee of the National Education Association and obtain proper information and proper data, the best obtainable from any source.

WORK AND SCOPE OF THE JUNIOR RED CROSS

HENRY NOBLE MAC CRACKEN, PRESIDENT OF VASSAR COLLEGE,
POUGHKEEPSIE, N.Y.

The Red Crescent still flaps defiantly over Samaria, but along the road the Good Samaritan once traveled your Red Cross flag goes winding down today toward ancient Jericho. The Red Cross is a living embodiment of the spirit of the Good Samaritan of old. It is the note of mutuality in the story of the Good Samaritan which set his act off from other good deeds. Being human was his regular business. He asked no questions, he uttered no criticisms, he sought out no causes; he did "what any man would do— what you would have done if you were in his place." The stranger wounded and robbed had afforded him an opportunity to show his humanity—that opportunity he instantly claimed as his human right. This is the spirit of mutual aid which has made your Red Cross of today.

Of the strength of such a spirit I need hardly speak. It was not merely a triumph of organization nor a recognition of business-like methods nor only a patriotic expression that led twenty-three and one-half millions of people at Christmas time to stand up and be counted at a dollar each for the Red Cross membership. As Dr. Finley has said, this enrolment is more significant than the ancient one when the whole Roman world went forth to be counted on the first Christmas. For the tribute which our citizens paid then was, not the tribute to Caesar, but a tribute of the spirit and a homage to eternal values inherent in the Red Cross idea.

This Red Cross idea appears under two aspects to one who has watcht it grow thru the past months at Washington. It is first of all the response by the community as a single social group which thru collective altruism helps individuals to freedom from calamities where self-help is not adequate. It is secondly an expression of citizenship such as Paul claimed when he compared himself with the chief captain who obtained with a great sum his citizenship-while Paul was free-born. The Red Cross expression of citizenship measures the innate power of free American-born communities to assume as by nature the general human tasks. Our people in many instances have for the first time been united by the Red Cross in common effort, and now they cannot wait for edict and proclamation to tell them how they may serve. The Red Cross is the economy of free will, of the volunteer spirit, and because it is so much an affair of the spirit it is one of the greatest forces today, as General Pershing cabled on last Monday. It maintains the morale of the troops in the trenches, the sailors on the sea, and also the folks young and old at home.

It has been often repeated-not too often, I think-that this is a war of nations; and the nation with the best morale will win, and morale means happiness. President Wilson said to me not long ago that one of his earliest memories as a boy was of knitting under his mother's watchful eyes for the

Confederate soldiers. The little boy learned to knit socks and could finish the toes, but not the heels-his mother always had to finish the heels for him. Today it is a question not of thousands but of millions of socks, and when the Army needs wool from the Red Cross storehouses the entire wool market is for a time absorbed. It was President Wilson's memory of those boyhood days when he felt that he was helping the cause for which his family was fighting that led him to approve the idea of a Junior Red Cross, and in a personal letter to me he said that he was sure that in future days school children would look back to the work of the Junior Red Cross as a happy circumstance of their school days. Happiness-this is the feature of the Junior Red Cross that I wish to emphasize in my few words today. The Junior Red Cross does not seek to bring to the school tales of pain and suffering and horror, feelings of war hate and of revenge, the encouragement of settling quarrels by might rather than by right; it offers instead a pleasant channel for the pent-up emotions of youth to pass out into useful fields of service. It hopes to divert the rising tide of juvenile delinquency, which is estimated by President Bodine, of the National League of Compulsory Education Officials, to have arisen 30 per cent in America since 1916, so that it shall not endanger our civic life. Believing that, as President Wilson said in his proclamation of September, the school is the natural center of their life the Junior Red Cross offers to young people a vitalizing power of purposeful activity within the school and under the control of school officials.

I wish to make this particularly clear because in the vast project as it is developt simultaneously in all parts of the country there has been misunderstanding here and there for which the Red Cross is probably most to blame because the organizers did not sufficiently keep this principle in mind-tho it has been stated again and again from the first. As our organization expands from day to day and our workers and officials understand its plan more clearly these misunderstandings vanish, and the justifiable suspicions of school authorities will fade away as they appreciate that the Red Cross seeks only to be their servant in maintaining for them a contact with worldactivity which will bring the happiness of service to young hearts.

If it were possible within the limit assigned to me I should like to pay a personal tribute to the many school officials thruout the United States who have made the Junior Red Cross what it is today. They have taken its organization thru the schools, adapted it to suit their needs, and have by the power of the symbol and the definiteness and concreteness of the work broken down many barriers which have hitherto shut out the thoughts of many children from real unity with the purpose of American educationcomplete and comprehending citizenship. On Monday of this week a superintendent of city schools in my office told me of a woman who rejoist in the Junior Red Cross because her girl, formerly excited by the constant sight of soldiers in the town, now no longer spent the night upon the street,

but workt at home. She told also of children's work in the schools the very perfection of which had stirred the idle hands of well-to-do women in the city to activity and set their fingers to work in emulation of the children. I could multiply such instances by thousands as the records have come in from among our four or five millions of Junior members, but many of you must know these cases better and more intimately than I.

The Junior Red Cross organization plan is, I think, so well known that I need not describe it here. You are probably aware of the divisional organization by which Red Cross authorities decentralize at centers in the great cities of the country. You know too, I think, of the Chapter School Committee in each Red Cross chapter composed of school people and subdividing among its members the Red Cross city or country district into zones which again subdivide with chairman and committee into individual schools or school districts. It is a simple and workable plan, as experience shows, following and imitating the method of school organization already perfected. The strength of the Junior Red Cross lies in the vigor of this organization and in the spirit of self-sacrifice which animates the teachers whose strength of heart and body have fitted them to become officers in this organization. It lies in the principle of school membership, making pupils feel that what they do for the Red Cross they do for their school. It lies also in the accuracy with which school accounts and records of production are kept and in the fidelity of the divisional officials in handling the vast amount of production which is today sending from our sewing-classes garments which will clothe children and babies in Belgium, France, and Italy. It is the aim of the Red Cross to make its organization flexible yet strong, efficient yet responsive, loyal and obedient, yet always seeking new and better methods and instruments to accomplish the vast work which the government has assigned to it.

What is the scope of that work? The Red Cross today has a program of rescue and relief. It recruits doctors and nurses for the medical and nursing corps, it supplies the thousands of hospitals in France with their surgical materials, it maintains among our Allies the canteens and other services which count immeasurably for international good feeling, and for the morale both at home and abroad. It rescues with pitying hands the victims of our enemies' rapacity as they return from across the border broken in spirit and in body. It relieves the physical want and necessities of the army and navy depots by supplementing the regular equipment. It maintains communication with the families at home when the lad on sea or land is ill or wounded, or has won a victor's death. It supplies camps in this country with great quantities of comforts of different kinds and adds to the hospital care of the doctors and nurses. Among the homes from which the soldiers and sailors are gone it carries on a work complementary to the government grants of money in seeing to it that the social standards of the families do not suffer because their sons have answered their country's call.