delights in the classics and languages. We should be able to say with Ruskin, "Let every youth in the land, from the King's son downward, learn to do something finely and thoroughly with the hands, so as to let him know what touch means; and to inform him of many things besides, which no man can learn but by some severely accurate discipline in doing." We should stand for a definite line of work that will appeal to the great army of more than fifty thousand young boys and girls in our state who are now out of school for no definite reason except that their lives are out of harmony with the . spirit of our schools. These are too young to earn a living by the sweat of their brows; they are often too lazy to do so. A school must be organized which will give them the habit of physical activity directed along lines of utility. The period of compulsory education for this class should not be set in terms of years, but in terms of the ability of the child to accomplish definite things with his hands, and to work under the stimulus of a normal. will power. Let us not console ourselves with the false notion that heredity has forever doomed them to a class that shall live and die out of harmony with the spirit of public education. Let us awake to the fact that proper school environment, in keeping with their real ability, together with an awakening of their will power, will in many cases give these young people the power to transform themselves. They constitute the great leakage, the great waste of the public school system. No school administration so far in this country has been able only to a limited degree to conserve this appalling loss of our young people. We have long consoled

ourselves with the thought that their absence was a good riddance, and that we were relieved of a burden the weight of which was measured only in terms of their stupidity. But not so. It stands to our discredit that throughout all the years we have been unable to work out a scheme of public education that is as broad as human nature, and that includes every child in its scope and application. The Master proclaimed salvation for the sinner. But we have failed to see the significance of the doctrine and are still preaching from the housetops an educational message which was not made for those who need it most. Instead of the child conforming to the school, the school of the future must conform to the child.

One of the things that stands out most prominently in the list of causes of this large absent class is the system of public examinations as conducted today in many of our schools. We have no right to measure the worth or progress of a child in terms of problems of algebra or questions of technical language construction. Each child should be measured by his own standard and in term of himself. It is always the effort that deserves praise and not the success. It is never a question for any student whether he is keener or duller than others. is not the business of a teacher to know or to try to determine whether one student is stronger than another. While examinations, as at present conducted, usually show this very thing, and this alone, they only defeat the purpose for which they should be held and do positive injury to a large majority of those who take part. Examinations are entirely proper in a sys

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and fate of our home life by instilling in the lives of our children a love and reverence for home ties. The home must be rededicated in the lives of our children, and reconsecrated to its sacred place among the principal institutions of civilized life. No other institution can take its place. The school and the home should have a common purpose, but each a distinct line of duties to perform. If you would have an idea move and control a nation, you must plant that idea in the hearts of the children and let it ripen and bear fruit in its appointed time. The home was the most natural center around which human effort and human destiny took on definite form. It was the shrine of the patriarch of old and the refuge of hearts beating in happy unison through all the centuries known to man. Its influence in the life of a child is so extremely important and far reaching that it should receive far greater recognition than at present as furnishing the chief environment at the early plastic period of a child's life.

Again, this convention could well afford to make recommendation to the proper authorities concerning the needed improvements of our rural school buildings and grounds. These buildings, many of them half a century old, are but the relics of a generation that knew not the ways and means of modern educational institutions. These represent neither beauty nor utility. They are wrecks of buildings that are unsanitary and unsafe. Often the most undesirable location in the community was selected because of the cheapness of the land. It seems but reasonable that we should ask that hereafter no school house be erected in this state until its site be approved by the coun

ty health officer and the plans be approved by the State Board of Health. With such a plan a wonderful transformation would take place. Under such direction the health and lives of our children would be conserved. We cannot look to the nation for the solution of such educational problems. As a nation our interest in public education does not deserve to be dignified by being mentioned. The way Congress supports and sustains our distinguished Commissioner of Education and his worthy assistants is the most discouraging thing in the scheme of the American government. This movement can be instituted only by a great body of teachers working with a common purpose.

What shall be the business of this nation, or of any nation? Shall it be to nurture and develop her people, or shall it be to go on as has been the case with nations for thousands of years, wasting the substance of her people, and pouring out her blood in an effort to shed the blood of their kin who happen to live under another flag? Must the chief business of a people be the destruction of the property and lives of another people? If you will but glance at the records of Congress, you will find that the largest item of expenditure of the people's money is given for the cause of war. For centuries old the nations of the earth have poured out their treasures at the feet. of the God of War. For centuries unnumbered the nations of earth have poured out their life's blood in an effort to shed the blood of the people of some kindred nation. In such a conflict might and not right comes forth. triumphant. Is it not time the race was asking why all this slaughter of