comparative study of educational systems is to imagine a vain thing. To visit other systems and, returning, proclaim our own to be weak and inadequate because it is not like others is to betray one's lack of understanding and to confess one wanting in the essential insight necessary to educational leadership in a democracy. Our system may be different. It should be, since its function is specific and particular. We can learn from others relative to methods of procedure, schemes of classification, common nomenclature, and forms of organization and administration; but all these are superficial details. The fundamental purpose lies deeper and is discerned only by a study of the school in its relation to democracy.

In the best sense of the word democracy's concern in education is purely selfish. It aims to realize through the school its own ends. What ever the state visions as good in its own advance, it rightly expects the school to impart. To this end the people are taxed and the state assumes control of the child, for in a true democracy, "the child belongs more to the state than to the home." We must not lose sight of the fact that the primary business of a public school system is to make illiteracy impossible, and by so doing make democracy possible. One illiterate citizen is a menace and his participation in our scheme of government is fraught with grave consequences. The voter, lacking in this common knowledge, is the easy prey of the gangster, and the occasion of the half-confessed fear that our civic institutions are destined to failure. The so-called campaign of education indulged in by the political parties once in four years is a beggarly and futile attempt to do what the school should have been permitted to do years before. The thinking man-the product of the school-may be a menace to gang rule but he is the one genuinely competent guardian of our national life.

The public school finds its chiefest defense, not in promoting the welfare of the individual put the welfare of the state itself. Its first concern must be to equip each to co-operate with his fellows and then, and not until then, shall it turn to the more individualistic task of fitting each one for the highest economic efficiency. The first business is to train for participation, then for competition.

We can never with safety add to the curriculum of the schools until we have first and always made ample provision in every school to teach the simple rudiments of the universally essential tools of democracy—a mastery of the language of the Republic and the ability to make record of one's thought in the symbols of language, and the symbols of number. The little red schoolhouse, with its zealous teacher and its drill in the three R's, is not a tradition from which to depart; but an ever-present reality around which to weave in loving appreciation all the tendrils of future growth. I do not object to education for efficiency provided only that we achieve efficiency for the ends of democracy before we achieve efficiency for individual gain. First, then, the school exists for the state and after that for the purely personal preferment of the individual in our industrial competition. The measure of efficiency is not the earning power for

the individual but the serving power for the state. In fact, earning power, the bread problem, is conditioned upon a stable and progressive democracy.

But democracy is but one of the forms of government by means of which individuals seek to advance the race. All peoples, living under all types of civic order, are in one way or another promoting the ends of civilization. The school for democracy must also be an agency of civilization. It must train its members to the willing need of giving to the race as a whole, in a purely unselfish way, special gifts of inventive and creative genius. But it does this in an altruistic spirit, and independent of the function it owes to democracy. We thus have two types of educational institutions to maintain, the free public schools for the ends of democracy; and the higher and technical schools for the ends of civilization. The test of the former is the quality of citizen it produces; the test of the latter is the degree of civilization it promotes. The gifts of these public schools are service to the state and to the individual. The gifts of the college and university are service to the advancement of the race as a whole. One does not ask of the public school the large gifts of creative genius but it does ask these gifts of the "capped and gowned" graduate of the university. The state supports the public school as a necessity. It supports the university as an obligation to civilization. One may not be a more worthy member of a democracy by reason of the special knowledge gained in the university, but one, ought surely to be, as a result of that special knowledge, directly a promoter of the universal good, and indirectly, by giving his special knowledge to his state, a promoter of democracy. If then the state provides by taxation for both types of education it meets its obligations first to itself and then to civilization. It follows that the relative worth of the several dominant forms of government is found in the measure of their world service. In this comparative study democracy may easily claim pre-eminence because of her unparalleled service to the race as a whole.

From a study of these views flow certain facts and considerations that relate rather definitely to the present status of our educational system.

a) The public school is limited in the realization of its function to democracy by the quality of teaching life it attracts, by the time it devotes to universalizing its fund of necessary common knowledge, by the amount of money expended in its maintenance, and by the effectiveness of its legislative provisions in securing regular attendance on the part of all embryo citizens between the ages of eight and sixteen years.

The first patriotic duty is to make the life of the teacher more tolerable, by surrounding him with a complete physical equipment, by enriching his social life, by promoting his professional welfare, and by increasing his compensation to make possible for him a higher standard of living. Under this declaration lies the need for a more sympathetic supervision, a more stable tenure of service, a generous retirement fund, the transportation of pupils, the consolidation of isolated schools, the lengthening of the minimum school year, and the

closer articulation of all the social, intellectual, and moral influences of the community with the school.

We can never serve democracy by lessening the years of an elementary education, nor by the devices that, to save time, really sacrifice efficiency. He only is true to his nation's welfare who steadfastly pleads for ample time to fix and make facile in the pupil's mind the fundamentals of an ordinary education, and who has the courage to declare that thoroughness in the things done is of more consequence to the state than the haste to rush to the college and university a product, which in spite of the higher institution, is but imperfectly and superficially fitted to participate in a progressive democracy. The patriot here is courageous enough to say, "It takes time, gentlemen, to educate citizens for this Republic."

The financial support of the school must be more ample, and its amount through stable legislation placed above the caprice of local petty partisan control. We know in advance how many pupils the school must receive, and we should know years in advance how much money we may plan to expend in the necessary development of the system as a whole. It is better and saner to erect ample school buildings surrounded by ample playgrounds and officered by thoroughly trained teachers than it is to maintain criminal courts, jails, hospitals, and asylums.

The state must so legislate as to make impossible the employment of childlabor; and it must, as it compels attendance, provide such varied forms of elementary education as to give to each child the largest gifts of guidance and helpfulness. The patriots here are the legislator and the school official who are wise enough to guarantee to the humblest and the most unfavored child the best training for democracy that experience can suggest.

b) There must be as ample provision made for play as for study. The ends of democracy are served not alone by the trained mind but also by the healthy body. Besides, supervised play is as effectively a training for democracy as is the supervised school. The ideal citizen appreciates and aids in maintaining for all a good home, a good school, a good church, and a good playground.

c) We need, more and more, a corps of teachers more anxious to serve the needs of childhood than to unfold in logical sequence the academic studies. To fit each individual to live with his kind is vastly more significant than to train him to the last degree of detailed accuracy in the formulae of the sciences. In short, the schools need, for the sake of a healthier democracy, more enthusiastic teachers, not more technical scholars.

d) To promote the ends of our national life let us widen the range of common knowledge for all and attract to the school the active sympathy and loyal support of those who love their country most and serve it best, not those who would exploit the school as an agency of selfish gain.

e) To promote the ends of civilization let us welcome all higher institutions of learning and secure to them generous national support. Let democracy assert its claim to "the best" by training its specialists to give freely and Ban. We thing.

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bountifully their choicest products, and their own service to promoting the welfare of the race as a whole. Let the ideal held steadily before each of our youth be unselfish service for his country and for his kind.

NEGRO EDUCATION AND THE NATION

BOOKER T. WASHINGTON, PRINCIPAL OF TUSKEGEE INSTITUTE, ALABAMA I believe that industrial education has a distinct function in preparing people for life in a democracy, and strengthening the life of these people in the country in which they live. In this respect, in the little village of Tuskegee, Alabama, for a number of years we have been trying in a humble and simple way to do our part in preparing some of the millions of our race for the part they are to play in the life of this republic, and we have been trying to do so in a fundamental and sensible manner.

We have emphasized, in connection with other forms of education, what is termed industrial education, ever since that institution was founded. We have done it with several points in view.

First, we have emphasized industrial education for its economic value to the school itself and to the student himself while upon our grounds. We have ninety-six buildings, large and small, upon our grounds, and all of them except four, have been almost wholly built by the labor of the students, and built at almost half the cost for which they would have been built by outside labor. A very large proportion of these students could never have remained there long enough to finish a course of study except for the chance which we have been affording them to help themselves through these industrial opportunities given upon our grounds.

Second, we have emphasized industrial education for its trade value. Every man or woman going out from that institution is the master of some special trade or industry by which he or she can earn his or her living any day in the year. We have emphasized it again for its mental or mind-building value. More and more I believe that the educational world is coming to agree that we cannot only learn, not only strengthen the mind by studying about things through the medium of books, but equally as much we can strengthen the mind by studying the things themselves, and even without the book. A great writer once said, "Whenever I hold my pen in my hand it helps me to think." I believe that more and more we are going to believe in the educational world, that holding a hammer or a saw or a trowel or a plow in the hand helps one to think.

We have found after years of experience at Tuskegee that we can make one form of training assist the other form. For example, go into our academic classes and you will find a large proportion of these problems in mathematics which the teachers use have been obtained from a brick yard or from a brick wall, or from some practical operation on the farm. In the old days you remember how the student was required to commit to memory table after

table relating to furlongs and acres and rods. When he got through he didn't know whether an acre was the size of this room or ten times its size. At Tuskegee our students go into the field and measure off an actual, a visible acre of land. Then they take the problem into the arithmetic class, and the student calculates the cost of the seed, and the cost of preparing the land and the cost of working and harvesting, for instance, an acre of turnips. Then often on commencement day that student gets up before his parents and reads an essay of how he himself has actually planted and worked and harvested an acre of turnips; and that kind of an essay on commencement day at Tuskegee is mighty interesting, because that student knows what he is talking about.

In this same connection we have emphasized industrial education also because of its moral value; its value in teaching the members of my race the lesson which any race of people needs when they first throw off the bonds of slavery, the lesson that all forms of labor are dignified, and all forms of idleness disgraceful. It is teaching my race to keep its feet upon the earth, and it is a great thing to teach a new, inexperienced race to keep its feet on the earth. At Tuskegee I never let a day pass without getting my hoe or shovel and going into my garden and digging down in the soil. I like to be sure that once a day at least I am touching the real thing; and it is equally important for a race to learn the same lesson.

You can easily imagine that it was not an easy task to teach my race, when it first became free, the dignity of labor; that there was an opportunity for it to become useful and strong and powerful through the medium of not only studying books, but by studying things as well, and learning the dignity of labor. I can remember how for months at Tuskegee in the earlier years of our efforts to found that institution, parents objected to industrial training for their children. They said over and over again, "We want our children to learn books." They didn't care what kind of books nor what the names of the books were, but books-books. They said, "Our people have been worked for two hundred and fifty years in slavery, and now you establish a school to work them some more." I said, "We haven't established a school to work the race. We have established a school to teach the race how to work." We told them there was a vast difference between being worked and working. We said to them that being worked meant degradation, and working meant civilization. But some people object to everything in the form of progress that hasn't been done in the same way for a thousand years.

But I am glad to say, my friends, that that objection has passed away completely, that there is much of enthusiasm now among the rank and file of my people in the South for the opportunity to learn how to work on the farm intelligently, scientifically, skilfully; that there is as much enthusiasm to learn mechanics or housekeeping as there is to learn algebra, history, or science, or any other department of academic training.

If you were to ask me to state in a sentence what has been the most powerful work of our institution, I should say that it consists in something that is