to all is certainly not due to any serious economic limitations. We are living in a "surplus economy"; and our total taxable wealth is adequate for the most severe demands which our school budgets may make upon it. The real reason then must be found in the survival of the undemocratic notion that some special consideration is due the individuals and the communities which contribute the larger share of the public taxes and that the less prosperous individuals and the poorer communities where usually children are most numerous are less worthy of consideration. The frequency with which one may hear the well-to-do classes in our industrial cities remark that such and such school accommodations are "good enough" for the sweat shop districts and the frequency also with which one may hear rural folk grant the easy assumption that city people in general are for some reason "entitled" to better school facilities than those living in the open country furnish adequate proof that we have not as a people clearly understood the state's equal obligation to all. Industrial cities have in many instances accumulated tremendous taxable assets by removing the natural wealth from forest and mine in larger areas, sometimes far removed. In some cases they have found it all but impossible to expend their school revenues raised from the levy of the minimum millage on an assessment based on a fractional part of the market value of property. In other instances the “meanest types of schools" have been maintained for the minimum term only by an excessive burden of taxation upon the "peasants" who still occupy these denuded mountains. A superficial study of school district boundaries, of property assessments, of tax rates and of school expenditures in almost any of our states will at once reveal concrete evidence of glaring inequality. The only real remedy for it must be found in the application of the democratic principle of "taxing equally all the property of all the people for the support of equal educational opportunities for all the children of all the people." In theory this principle has long met with general acceptance; in practice it has been by no means universally applied. Until that has been done, the first step has not been taken in carrying out the educational program of a truly democratic republic.

PROVISIONS FOR EXCEPTIONAL CHILDREN

Our school systems should be so organized and conducted as to minister with equal diligence to the needs of pupils of each of the several grades of natural ability.

It used to be assumed that the benefits of education were

heaven ordained for the privileged few and that at best these advantages might be safely extended to such promising children outside the ranks of the "best families" as should in some way or other give indication of the possibility of capable and useful leadership.

With the development during the nineteenth century of a more democratic concept of education, there have come not only free schools for all but also some forms of educational compulsion, covering at least the childhood period. This has resulted not primarily from any philanthropic impulse to guarantee to childhood its inalienable rights but rather from the conscious purpose of society to protect itself from the burdens imposed by those who otherwise might grow up morally vicious, physically defective or economically dependent. This compulsion first took the form of enforced school attendance. It brought into our school systems a large contingent of children either mentally incompetent or physically unfit for profitable participation in the traditional school program of studies and activities. The rapid decline during the past twenty-five years in the relative numbers in attendance at private "select" schools for those thought to be especially capable has brought into the public school systems another considerable group.

Our public school enrollment has since been more or less typical of all the social and industrial groups in our entire population and is everywhere truly representative of all conceivable shades of variation in individual native endowment of positive and sometimes even of negative character. This is especially true in the elementary grades. To state the facts in more scientific terms one might say that there are about four per cent of talented pupils some of them bordering on real genius; about ninety-two per cent who are neither highly talented nor in any real sense feeble-minded ranging from the bright, active and alert types all the way down to the slowest and dullest; and about four per cent who may be designated as feeble-minded, usually including a considerable number of really deficient mentality.

Speaking in terms of their educability we need to designate only two groups; the first composed of those who under proper instruction and training-including industrial as well as academic-may become socially competent, that is, self supporting and more or less independent members of society; the second composed of a relatively small number who, because of congenital weakness or defect or through serious disease or other subsequent misfortune, will always -in spite of any advantages which the school may offer-be and remain socially incompetent, that is dependent upon others for actual support and in most cases requiring institutional care. This second group includes the morally insane, the violent, the demented, the feeble-minded, epileptics, those suffering from chronic infectious diseases, and such as are helplessly crippled or deformed. Not being in any proper sense of the term educable subjects, they are usually isolated in custodial institutions.

It may be said with respect to the larger group, those who are educable and therefore socially competent and this includes nearly all the children in most communities that the problem of making adequate provision for all types of them seems to be one of growing complexity. This is not really the case, however. The fact that experts in our psychological clinics, in our schools of education and in our public school systems have identified many types of misfits and have discovered some of the causes for the considerable retardation which has clogged the machinery of our elementary school grades has only emphasized the complexity of the problem. All of these special investigations and studies have in one form or another revealed the simple fact that children have individual characteristics and individual needs. As a result educational authorities and teachers everywhere are making commendable efforts to provide an educational program of interest and of social value for every child. They have greatly enriched the course of study in recent years and have provided for new forms of instruction in a great variety of special types of public institutions. These include in many of our large centers at least the following schools or classes: for the blind, for the deaf, for delinquents (including persistent truants), for cripples, for anemics, for children suffering from nervous diseases, for children having speech defects, for foreigners (until they learn the elements of English), for the backward, for such as especially need certain types of motor training, and for supernormal or exceptionally gifted children.1

1 See Van Sickle, Witmer and Ayres, Provisions for Exceptional Children in Public Schools, United States Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C. Also Mitchell, David, Schools and Classes for Exceptional Children, Russell Sage Foundation, New York.

The progress made in recent years in perfecting plans of school organization by means of which children in any given school system might be promoted with varying degrees of rapidity and on the completion of different amounts of work is quite as gratifying and commendable.2

It is not necessary to suggest that segregation affords many practical advantages to so called "normal" children (from whose classes many of them have been removed) as well as to the variants or sub-deviates themselves. Nor is it necessary any longer to defend the practice against the objections of those who once regarded it as un-American and undemocratic. It must be at once obvious to all intelligent citizens that equality of educational opportunity does not necessarily imply identity or even similarity of educational opportunity and that it is in the interests of both society and the individual that these special provisions should be made. Any educational program which is truly democratic must endeavor to guarantee to every educable child the fullest measure of spiritual freedom which is for him attainable-regardless of whether society has designated him as a genius or a "supernormal" or has placed upon him the stigma of "dullard," "laggard" or "subnormal."

A MANY-SIDED CURRICULUM

The program of school studies and activities should be so manysided as to show equal deference to the tastes and interests and needs-vocational and cultural-of all.

Much of what has been said under the previous heading would apply with equal force in support of this proposition. Preparation for participation in the ever increasingly complex social life of our times demands a training as wide as life itself. Any intelligent discussion of the "essentials" of education must be based on a clear recognition of two fundamental facts; first, that no traditional course of study, no branch of learning, no type of training, no "discipline," may properly be regarded as an essential in education in twentieth century America-no matter how important it may have been at any previous period in history or among any other people unless it meets some distinctly human need in the life of the individual or of society; second, that the individual's and

2 See Holmes, W. H., School Organization and the Individual Child. Worcester, Mass.

society's needs must to an ever increasing degree be supplied by the ministry of the expert, the professional, whose specialized knowledge and technical training may never be regarded as the common essentials in the educational equipment required of all. A clear recognition of these facts would lead to several important results:

First. In the elementary school we should omit much of the traditional subject-matter-not whole branches of study, but parts of them-which belongs to the field of the specialist or which for other reasons no longer functions in our new social order. If this were done we should have ample time and opportunity to introduce much new subject-matter which has large social value. We must first trim the dead limbs from the tree of knowledge.

Second. In the secondary school we should surely place a larger emphasis upon vocational training in the non-professional callings. Is it not true that all education of adolescents worthy of the name has ever been predominantly vocational in its purpose even for the small number who until recently monopolized the advantages of the secondary school? And is it not equally true that for the great majority of men and women-in all the callings of life the truest happiness and the broadest and most genuinely democratic culture has ever been attained through intelligent and willing participation in some form of socially useful vocational activity? It has already been well demonstrated in at least a few places that the more nearly the secondary school approximates the spirit of a splendidly organized coöperatively managed work shop the more genuinely cultural is its discipline and the more certainly continuing is its influence on most of those who participate in its activities.

Third. In the field of higher professional education we should no longer limit full recognition to the so-called learned professions of law, medicine, and divinity. It is surely open to serious question whether under the conditions of modern life the lawyer can render society as significant service as the engineer, whether the physician can relieve human misery as effectively as the sanitarian can prevent it, or whether the minister can forestall moral and spiritual disaster as successfully in most instances as the teacher can. Society still needs and always will need the services of the "learned" professions, but their ministries alone will not suffice. Happily our state uni