4. The vice-principal and the treasurer,
both Chinese, should be dismissed.

5. Less English be taught in order to per-
mit more time for study of the works of
Sun Yat-sen and Communistic books.
6. Freedom be granted to students to join
any political organization.

Such demands having been presented, the faculty meets and makes a list of counter proposals, granting as much as possible and diplomatically refusing the remainder. In one school these counter proposals were accepted and the matter was finished up in a day. But this school was exceptionally wellmanaged and was composed of exceptionally well-disposed students. More usually the bargaining process goes on in an extremely tense atmosphere, sometimes with violence as in one case where the students fell upon the buildings and smashed everything within reach; or in another where the vice-principal, a Chinese, was beaten with clubs and detained in a small room over night. Students who do not approve of the disorders are thoroughly cowed, sometimes by accusations of lack of patriotism and sometimes by threats of personal violence. Where the trouble is serious, and in most cases recently it has been serious, the faculty is compelled to close the school.

Unfortunately, however, this is not so simple as one might suppose. What the students want is not a closed school but one kept open on their own terms. Thus they refuse to leave the buildings. The faculty is The faculty is assured by Government officials that such rowdyism will not be permitted. It continues uninterrupted however. It is useless to call the police for they cannot act without authority. The school kitchen cannot be closed for fear of violence. In short it is only by argument and cajolery exerted by Chinese members of the faculty that the student leaders are at last persuaded to permit their classmates to leave. Sometimes the students keep on living in the school buildings and in at least one case, after the students had left, the leaders came back every day and persecuted the Chinese until they were forced to leave the premises.

The anatomy of the student strike is interesting because it reflects the condition of the country. To the Westerner a school strike seems an anomaly. Conditions in the West are such that students could not be permitted to defy the school authorities. The strikes of Chinese students are possible and arise out of a set of conditions which are entirely different from those which exist in Western schools. These conditions are intimately connected with the political and national situation.

A year or two ago these conditions were such that it was possible for strikes to occur in government schools. Disintegration and instability in government circles made it possible for government students to defy the authorities. The government was forced to countenance lawlessness with which it had no way of dealing, and strikes became frequent. Students exercised a degree of control which to the Western mind seemed almost impossible, extending even to the dismissal of teachers and principals who did not suit their whim. Mission schools, however, were not seriously troubled for they were able to discipline the students. The authority of the missionary was still enforced by the foreign treaties which, in spite of his repudiation of their benefits, still hovered protectingly about him whether he would or no. When strikes did enter the mission schools the school troubled usually closed down for a while with due effect upon the student body.

During the past school term, however, the strike-disease has been contracted by the mission schools as well. This is largely due to the fact that under the local branches of the new Southern Government, the missionary, if not directly repudiated, is at least not protected. He is robbed of his authority and is utterly helpless in the hands of the students and the political agitators who control them. The southern government states unconditionally that the present treaties must go, and the missionary who was formerly under the treaties, an unwilling benefactor, now becomes the butt of the contumely heaped upon them.

The situation seems to vary in different centers according as Russian and Bolshevik influence in that center is more or less strong. In Hunan, for instance, practically every mission school is closed. Charles Dailey says in The Chinaweekly Review "As I write, the foreign staff of Yale-in-China is ready to flee at a moment's notice, and some of the Chinese staff, headed by Dr. F. C. Yen, the nominal head, already have sought safety in flight after a threat by the students to parade Doctor Yen through the streets of Changsha, which is the greatest insult and humiliation which can be heaped on the head of a Chinese." In Canton, however, where the worst of the storm has blown over, the Canton Christian College claims to have had the best year which it has had under any government for some years; and in Wuchang,

Boone College and middle school are still running much as usual, although the atmosphere is somewhat disturbed.

High officials in the government, many of whom are Christians, state that the government is not against Christian mission schools. In the meanwhile, however, the persecutions go on. A set of regulations for registration of Christian schools has been promulgated. The chief restriction placed on mission schools by these regulations is that they may not make religious exercises and teachings compulsory. Opinions among missionaries as to the advisability of registration seem divided. It seems likely that mission schools which wish to stay open or reopen will have to register. At present, times are so upset that it is impossible to know what will be the final issue.

W

THAT church do you attend?" "If not a member of any, which do you prefer?" "Name three people who can testify to your character, including the pastor of your church."

The foregoing have been gleaned from regulation application blanks which prospective teachers must fill out. Every teachers' agency in the United States, without a single exception, requires applicants to submit to this theological inquisition. By far the majority of school boards and school superintendents do the same. The exceptions are the superintendents and boards of the larger cities, and the few states where the religious test for teachers is prohibited by law. Even where the law forbids, the statute is honored more in the breach than in the observance.

More important indeed than "Can you teach your subject well?" and "Are you ex

perienced?" is the query, "What church do you attend?"

If you seek an explanation, you will find several. A good teacher, you may be informed, must be "regular," that is, she must be conventional in her theological views. That requirement, of course, would prohibit Luther Burbank, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin from qualifying as safe algebra instructors, assuming these gentlemen returned to earth in the year 1927 and sought such positions.

None of these great characters, we fear, could pass the scrutiny of the board of education of any of ten thousand American communities. They weren't "regular." Hence, while their names will be remembered as long as history is written, they are not fit to be seen in the roster of possibly eighty per cent of the schools in the land which they helped to attain greatness.

I challenge, frankly, the assumption that there is a necessary correlation between religion and teaching ability, between religion and morality, between a religion and fitness to lead the young.

It is an unproven assumption, fostered by ministers fearful of their prestige, and encouraged by laymen and board members who can think of no other test for guaranteeing a teacher's conventional behavior.

ster.

Compulsory or optional Bible instruction has nowhere led to a better type of youngIn a nearby city, where I made recent inquiry as to the effect of optional Bible teaching, I was told that in no class in the entire school was discipline more difficult.

A few months ago I collected material upon the extent of lynching in the United States since 1889, when the records begin. This I compared with government data concerning the attitude of the various states toward Bible instruction in the public schools. There was no respectable correlation between the two.

Bible instruction had had no appreciable effect upon that crime. Burning and hanging went side by side with religious teaching in the schools of the community, not as a result of such teaching, I hasten to add, but in spite of it.

True education, I concluded, has its roots in other methods of instruction.

The religious test for prospective teachers deadens the character of the instruction offered. A cosmopolitan group of school men and women assures an endless amount of new ideas, the presentation of novel methods of approach, in short, it serves as a partial guarantee of an education that is the antithesis of provincial. A uniform group guarantees the output of millions upon millions of intellectual Fords, all built according to a single model.

It is time for educators and teachers to demand that the provisions of our state constitutions guaranteeing separation of church and state mean something. We have

had enough of religious tests in violation of expressed basic laws. We have had more than enough of anti-evolution propaganda that would resolve the teacher into an automaton, mumbling words by rote, soulless and submissive.

America is a cosmopolitian country and the teaching profession should reflect that cosmopolitanism.

We are an industrial nation. Our continued prosperity requires the utilization of every pacific weapon for the maintenance of our present greatness. Freedom for scientific inquiry is absolutely essential. How can we compete upon a level of equality with rival European and Asiatic powers during this era of intense competition, when a considerable section of our adult population acquiesces in the efforts of reactionaries to reduce education to a routine procedure that demands anything but living, intelligent beings?

It is time for educators to face their problems frankly. It is more than time to discard shibboleths, outworn and essentially false.

The public school must be the seat of untrammeled free inquiry. Educators should demand that right at every session where schoolmen gather. They should insist that the church be a coöperative factor, but that the tried principle that public schools be divorced from theological domination become a reality in every aspect of public education.

The clamp upon science must be removed. The religious test for prospective teachers should be abolished.

Education should keep pace with the real America, a great industrial nation of one hundred and ten millions, seeking to meet the ever-pressing issues arising from its own complexity.

Are there forces within our educational life great enough to demand for the public schools its rightful heritage? Must the public school always be on the defensive? What do the schoolmen say?

In another classroom the Fourth Grade pupils were reading some rules on health. The caption was "Ten Commandments of Health," and some of these were: 1. Walk in the open air. 2. Keep a happy mind. 3. Breathe deeply of pure air. 4. Get plenty of sleep each night. 5. Give your body and soul plenty of sunlight. 6. Eat plain food and just enough of it; and so forth, to the end.

In a Fifth Grade class the teacher had written on the board "Five Good Rules for Success," and the pupils were learning, or at least reading, that these rules were: 1. Hard Work.

2. Common Sense. 3. Good Habits. 4. Practical Experience. 5. The Value of A Dollar.

During the auditorium assembly period that morning, the 4th, 5th, and 6th Grades had sat through a program and other exercises. The Bible had been read, announcements were made, and then the April School Bulletin was used to emphasize another type of Success lesson. The title of it was "It is Not Easy," and it enumerated seventeen things not easy to do, concluding with the statement: "But it always pays."

So it seems! At any rate, in classroom and auditorium, in books and booklets, on blackboard and platform, the lessons of "Success" are being taught, read, studied, memorized, discussed, impressed, and otherwise thrust upon unsuspecting pupils.

How much of this is effective? Do the pupils realize the teachers' motive, or do they simply take it as another piece of school-room activity on a par with lessons in history, geography, arithmetic, and composition?

Is there any inspiration in all these good things the teachers and others provide for the uplift of children? How can the teachers tell whether such material is beginning to "take hold" of the pupils, and what are some of the symptoms? When rules of health and cleanliness are studied in the classroom, and when that same afternoon or the next, a dozen pair of hands are begrimed, with finger nails long and overstuffed, and noses and ears significantly clamoring for attention-is that a challenge to the teacher's ability to put over a lesson on health?

Perhaps the teacher is not to blame after all. Is it her duty to make lessons "work"? If a child knows what the teacher teaches and if he memorizes what he has learned, is it the teacher's business to see that he practises that lesson? She can examine her pupils and prove that her lessons on geography, cleanliness, history, health, number work, and success have all been memorized. But geography and history can't be practised even after they are well learned, so why expect her to demand practise in any other school subject?

This is specious argument, of course, and ought not to be entertained—perhaps. But the fact is, teachers ought to know just how much responsibility is theirs in getting “active” results from pupils. If the teacher is reasonably sure of her success in teaching a lesson, in so far as the pupil's understanding goes, and that pupil can prove that he knows his lesson, should she be held responsible for his practise of that bit of knowledge outside of school?

This is not so far-fetched as it may appear to be from a casual reading. So many "Success Habits" are talked about in the class room from time to time. Posture, thrift, honesty, truth, industry-besides other virtues and necessities-form part of the instruction these days. What intimations are there to make the teacher feel that she is to answer for the children's practise of these traits outside of the classroom?

Out in the corridor of the school there is an exhibition of posters mounted on movable standards. Over a hundred striking pic tures and ideas form an attractive lane through which pupils of all ages are constantly moving to and from rooms. They stop to read, to study, to admire the variegated presentation of rules and illustrations --all bearing on success in life. The topics are health, play, work, food, air, sleep, ambition, and other worth-while endeavors.

It is curious to watch these children. They stand absorbed-reading, examining, scrutinizing the display. They look serious. They never speak to each other about it. They read, they inspect, they examine the pictures, captions and text with, apparently, deep interest. Little tots from the first grade, big boys and girls from the upper classes they seem to be held in a firm grip of something vital the moment they pause before these posters.

What are they drawing in from all this? Are habits formed in this way? Do ideas sink in silently, steadily, insistently, to be turned into good use some wonderful day? Or must the teacher seize this interest now and seek a way to have the child put it into practise? Why do the children read and reread these things? Are such ideas instinctively attractive to young minds, and will they become automatically active at some future date?

Here is a good field within range of daily observation for every teacher. The laboratory is practically ready for experiment every day. Success habits in the classroom ought to be studied attentively and followed up. If they are to be taught for the sake of future use, the teacher's task is simple-like the posters'. On the other hand, if the teacher has to make these lessons turn into practise now, she has some job!

T

HERE is a temptation in presenting military training for consideration as a medium for the teaching of good citizenship, to take the defensive and try to clear the minds of one's auditors of the brambles of popularly imposed prejudices against

it before endeavoring to present the topic. The opponents of military training may be divided, in general, into two classes: those whose knowledge of it is superficial or academic only, and those whose experience with the military life has been colored by the