Yet I think there may be some basis for criticism. This dissatisfaction. with public school purposes and conditions is quite widespread. In this discussion I am trying to look at it from the standpoint not of the school teacher, but of the citizen and business man. Viewed from this standpoint the function of the public high school paid for by common taxation is threefold.

First. To give a pupil training that will aid him in making a living.
Second. To give culture that he may enjoy living.

Third. To so train his intelligence that he shall be a good citizen. From another viewpoint we may give as the function of the high school:

First. To prepare those who are going to college.

Second. To prepare those who are not going to college.

Each of these in my judgment equals the other in importance and differs from it. Much has been done for the first; not much for the second. A small per cent only of those who enter the high school go to the college. We may not do any less for those who do go, but I think we must do more and differently for those who are not to go.

In the evolution of our civilization the high school came into existence to satisfy a demand of the American people for a broader education than the elementary schools afforded. The only preparatory schools for college were the academies :-the high school took the place of the academy. The idea that young people were to be prepared for college at public expense is comparatively recent. The principle of taxation for the support of the high school was established in 1874 in the celebrated case, Kalamazoo vs. Stuart. In this case the Supreme Court of Michigan justified a public tax for the support of a high school.

With the evolution of educational ideas has come a new notion of what constitutes education and also what constitutes preparation for living. The schools of the past were aristocratic or professional in their tendency. It is evident from the present demand that the public schools of the future must be more and more democratic, and by that we mean that they must more and more touch closely the every day problems of life. As we view it now the function of the high school is to give a young man a working knowledge of English, history, mathematics and science; and also an opportunity to apply this while in school to some of the fundamental manual occupations. Thus the school on one side will afford what we may call culture; on the other side, training in life's activities. Of these mechanics, agriculture, household economics are fundamental. We are coming to look at these as an important part of public education. It seems strange and terribly wrong that in a democracy this side of public education has been neglected. For two generations provision has been made for secondary training of the liberal sort, training which has benefited only a small minority of the children of the conutry, the sons and daughters of the well-to-do; while the

great majority of children, whose parents could not afford to send them to the high school for a general education, has been driven from the public schools to learn a trade, with difficulty, in the shop or factory. With difficulty, because the apprentice system no longer exists, and industrial institutions are not run with the philanthropic purpose of educating novices.

Most of those who through necessity or choice have acquired a knowledge of bookkeeping, shorthand and typewriting or any other wage earning art, have attained this at their own expense in private institutions. There is a statement made, for the truth of which I do not vouch, that in this year of grace, in the city of Chicago, more boys and girls between the ages of fourteen and eighteen years are attending privately conducted institutions than are attending all of the Chicago public high schools, and that these pay to these private institutions for tuition more money than it costs to support the entire public high school system of Chicago. If this is true, the high schools of Chicago are not common schools in the best sense of that term.

Beyond the elementary school, in the past, education has been provided for the few who least needed it and has left the many who most needed to have that training provided for them, to shift for themselves. As we look at it now, it has been a gross injustice that a poor man should contribute to the maintenance of a costly system of high schools to which he is unable to send his own children, while such schools as they might attend, the state has failed to provide.

I believe that the present high school needs readjustment. If the conditions in which it was created were in existence now it would be ideal. If the present high school could have been placed in the midst of the past generation, the generation with its individualism; its handwork in the home; its family industrial life; its rural community life; its life when hand training was universal and head training occasional; its life when the great mass of workers needed leaders in thought to show them better, quicker, easier and more scientific and efficient ways of doing things; to show them how to shake off some of the drudgery;-the present high school would be the greatest piece of educational work ever constructed by any people at public expense or at any expense; but conditions have changed radically and we have kept on perfecting our high schools from the old academic standard. It is like perfecting a tallow candle or a wagon when the people are using electric lights and flying machines.

The fundamentals of education are the same as they always were. They will be so as long as the human mind exists. The materials and applications of education have changed. Knowledge unapplied or unappliable is not of the greatest value among an industrial people. The three R's are as essential as they always were, but the three R's of today are not the same three R's of a century or a generation ago. Writing as a fundamental past generation R is not of such importance as it used to be. The typewriter,

dictaphone, telephone and telegraph have put it out of business. The adding machine and the multiplying machine are making inroads on the old type of arithmetic; the moving picture, on the old style geography. One language is enough. Speaking generally, there is no use for any other even if acquired.

The high school must know from the beginning to what use its product is to be put. What we call a general education is not of great practical use now a days nor will it be in the future. Hence the idea which the high school possesses now of teaching a little of everything to everybody in a certain and prescribed time needs correction.

Time is a most important element in any kind of a life. A nation must have producers before it can take care of its consumers. The school ought to be the last place for misdirected or squandered time. It must save time by going straight to the point. The zigzag route to a job via foreign language, botany, zoology, chemistry, physiography, physics and general this and general that, is too devious and intricate for the great majority to follow, and more often leads to a world barren and uninhabited except to the leisure class:-it lead directly away from work and the industries. If it be true as some times charged that the high school is educating boys and girls away from manual labor, to look down upon the mechanical trades, and the homely arts of common life, it is unforgivable. The high school, if it keeps its place in the confidence of the people, must aim to turn out a product which will fit into the present social and industrial world. There has been too much refitting necessary in the past. The high school life must be so much a part of the world into which its product is to go that there will be no such thing as a general transplanting or refitting.

The present high school goes on the supposition that a little of everything except industrial work is necessary in order that a person may discover himself. The result is that few are discovered and the waste in readjustment after leaving school is enormous. The school has been turning out a head trained product while the community has demanded a hand trained product with a head to guide it. The school has been training for the profession, law, medicine, teaching and preaching, while the patrons have wanted efficient workmen for business and the industries. The school must turn out people who can produce something or at least be efficient distributors and economic consumers. Any other product must stand around with its hands in its pockets unable to produce because it has not been trained to it, and ultimately to find its way into the economic junk heap.

The school ought to do its utmost to make a fellow choose something by which he can make a living. This can be done only by offering him an education and training leading directly to a definite end, and we have been so afraid that anything with a job attached to it was not cultural that we have headed people away from the modern economical world and not into it. The high school has been entirely bookish, and books at best are only

studies about things, not a study of them. Opinion of the book has been interposed between the pupils and the subject with the result that there is little independent thought on the matter. The book is a bulwark behind which any teacher may hide while she is counterfeiting with the subject. Books are not constructive in themselves and the constructive element is the vital one for high school. For this reason much of the work goes to the waste basket where it belongs. There must be more study of things and less study about things.

The high school has been run almost entirely on the plan that all the students may stay until they graduate, that is, remain four years, no more and no less. The fact is that two-thirds who enter do not complete the course. Some drop out because of necessity in order to make a living for themselves or others. These at least should be allowed to take whatever work they think of value and to do as much of it as possible. Let them concentrate on one definite line and go ahead regardless of the rest of the school. Special classes are necessary and imperative, and teachers who appreciate the situation of these people are equally necessary. Others drop out because of their blindness in some particular study, like Latin or physics or algebra. They have no aptitude for that one particular branch. For those who have no aptitude for anything there is no remedy but to let them go the road that necessity or starvation forces them into. They are the menials of economic society, the hewers of wood and the drawers of water, and as such have their place; but our present plan of forcing those who have a special or even a reasonable aptitude for one line, to take subjects in which they have no interest and no skill, is certain disaster.

I do not advocate letting people choose snaps or quit as soon as a subject presents difficulties, but I do not believe it is good pedagogy or good business to try to make a hound herd sheep or try to make a homing pigeon out of a duck. The pupil with any aptitude should be allowed to develop that aptitude and to develop it with energy.

Any human being is fortunate if he finds and develops his aptitude. To only a few is it ever given to possess more than one, and even to these few the spirit of vacillation as to which talent to use is a handicap. I believe in letting any one take anything as long as he works to a purpose, and that his own purpose. He may take it within regular school hours or outside of school hours under the guidance of the school, just so long as he is in earnest with himself and the subject.

I think we must get away from the rigid course of study, the take all or take none plan. This can be done as soon as we understand that it is the worker and the subject which counts. I do not mean by this that people be allowed to skip promiscuously all over the course until they earn the fifteen credits, or if they do not plan to graduate to loiter awhile over this and that subject.

I do mean that courses of study be adjusted along certain definite and

continuous lines, lines which lead directly somewhere, and that students follow one or another without being compelled to follow something of all. There must be short cuts for the rapid and skillful as well as for those who have but a short time to spend in high school.

The answer to the question, "What shall the high school teach?" is, teach what the community can use and wants to use, and teach it so that it is usable. Lop off everything else. This means fundamentals of an education for all; one line leading to the industries, the things by which the average person makes a living; another line leading to the college and professions. The line leading to the industries must recognize quality as well as quantity. The line leading to the university must recognize quality rather than quantity. This will mean a reversal of our present high school viewpoint. Girls and boys differ in their natus and destinies. Hence the futility of a school which treats them alike, requiring them to take the same type of studies with the result that the training of neither especially fits him for his station in life.

We cannot always tell what line of education is best for a boy because we do not always know what he is to do. We cannot always determine his aptitude. We may educate him for one line and he may choose another. But we need have no such uncertainty about girls. We know what they are going to do. We know what their profession is to be. We know the business that they are going to follow. The great business of their lives, their profession, is to be a housekeeper, the maker and keeper of a home and the mother of children. With this absolute certainty before us, the high school has not always taken much account of the most desirable education for girls. It is urged that domestic science ought to be taught in the home, the mother ought to be the teacher:-granted, but in practice mothers do not teach their daughters. Not always do mothers have a knowledge of the underlying sciences, however proficient in the art.

Even in Michigan I believe not enough attention is given to the education that will fit a girl for her job. Forty-five cities out of 109 in Michigan, or practically 50 per cent, have instruction in domestic science. Seven incorporated villages out of 333, or only 2 per cent, report instruction given in domestic science; but only 24 of these 55 cities and 7 of these villages give work in household arts four days in the week. These cities and villages have a total enrollment in the grades of 161,835; a total in high schools of 25,622; a total in the ninth grade of 9,149; a total in the twelfth grade of 3,957.

There graduated last June from these high schools in Michigan 3,384. There are 10,377 girls in Michigan studying Latin, French or German. 9,551 girls study algebra or geometry. The number of girls studying household arts four days in the week is 3,258. One-third as many girls are studying household arts as are studying Latin, French or German; and a little more than one-third as many girls are studying household arts as are