defends the profession, personal attractiveness that is characterized by a willingness to allow her male escort to park his roadster on a country road until the wee small hours, and allegiance to a Republican President and a Democratic mayor!" Is this a criticism of modern women or of a professional body? If the latter, one must perforce ask who is responsible for the political situation which allows the Republican President and the Democratic mayor to purchase the brass. How long could the teacher or any other appointed office-holder retain her position if she publicly supported an impotent third party and criticized government policy? Free the schools from local politics, take away the failure-or-success edict of a principal over his teachers, and you will be amazed to see what a forward-looking body of workers are already in the ranks. How do you know that Mary Brown never makes constructive criticisms of the Government? Because Willie is taught the pledge to the flag and allegiance to the American nation? Did you ever ask Willie what excuses Teacher gave for the part the United States played in the Mexican War? Oh, she found excuses, but she let the class see there was a need for them. It is asserted that Mary Brown doesn't care to listen to Whiting Williams. When Williams spoke in our town, long before he was so well known, he talked before two groups-the Men's City Club and the Forum Club. The latter organization has never attracted members outside our profession; its sessions are neither social nor amusing; but the room was packed that night and we kept Williams talking until close to midnight. If Mary Brown never breaks from her complacency why is it that teachers are called to confer with the superintendent for discussing liberal ideals; and why do teachers' examinations include such questions as: "Do you believe in presenting controversial questions to young people?" and "What are the dangers attendant on presenting both sides of political questions to high-school youths?" in the wee hours? Well, that is the sort of situation in which only a witness could identify the participants. But the girls I know won't even go to the theater week nights because it isn't fair to the children to be so tired next day. Tell us an occupation which has as large a body of employees where you will find as much intelligence, earnestness, desire to go to Europe-ness, personal attractiveness and patience with irritating children and stupid men superiors? Has either law or medicine advanced its procedure or methods as the teaching profession has done in the past twenty years? Has either profession brought to itself a clientèle doubled as many times as have the schools? Does any other profession support extension classes and summer schools or show an interest in professional study in any degree commensurate with the attitude of teachers? Your tale of Mary Brown reminds me of Mary White. She is one of those who have never left the profession; she began teaching at eighteen and is still at it at sixty-five. The thing which interests me in her is the large number of intimate friendships which she maintains with former pupils, the efforts which they make to call on her, to write to her, and occasionally to send her telegrams of greeting. Among these friends is a consulting engineer with offices in Los Angeles and New York, a bishop in China, a business man in Chicago, the wife of a well-known man, an instructor in Harvard and one in Columbia. The story of these two Ph.D's is characteristic of why Mary White's former pupils remember her. One was the dull boy of his high-school class; he failed in everything until Mary White got him interested in science. His major interest has shifted to-day, but he doesn't forget his teacher. The other instructor was a bright girl whose parents were going to make a stenographer of her until Miss White persuaded them to send her to college. In addition to such activities, Mary White supported her mother, helped a sister who had made an unfortunate marriage, sent the sister's child through high And so you think we sit in dark roadsters school and college, and even helped two of her brothers-one in his youth, the other in old age. Yet Mary White is a modern woman to-day in spite of her years; they have brought her richness without decay. She keeps up her interest in politics and science. Last summer she went on a cargo steamer to South America, and up on the Amazon. Yes, she is another example of the way in which women stick to teaching; she is earning only $2,000 a year and she can't afford to retire just yet. Mary Brown of the brass halo was a flashily drawn generalization of a type common among American women; Mary White is a live, true teacher of the type common among women teachers. Shall we ask her to wear the same size halo as Mary Brown? MARIE QUITS HIGH SCHOOL ROSCOE PULLIAM [I knew a high-school principal who set out to prove the old contention of the philosophers that good times and happiness are not dependent on money. His dances were a delight; a piano made the music. They had no Annual with photographs; graduation invitations were written not printed. There were no pins, no rings, no commencement gifts nor flowers. The girls wore their white middy blouses and big blue ties; the boys, their ordinary clothes. And yet the spirit—that's the thing — the spirit of that school was radiant. Here's a short and simple statement of a tragic American fact by a real American teacher in a typical American town, Staunton, Illinois. He hears the educational orators extoll the American ideal of equality of opportunity. God knows it's hard enough to get, in any case. But the American public school was instituted to strive toward this goal. But when you see us letting the expensive apings of snobbery creep in to kill the democracy of us in the very temple of it-this is enough to turn our Jefferson in his grave. Why not put an end to it? Where's your nerve?] M ARIE is visiting next door. Marie is pretty. Marie is also intelligent. Last year Marie led her class in a small high school in Indiana. She was a junior. She liked school, school work suited her, and she would like to return this year to graduate. But Marie is not going to return to high school. She says she cannot afford to graduate. It is pointed out to her that she can not afford not to graduate, that the high school is free, that she will need clothes and board even if she is not in high school, and that a girl can easily earn enough money for her books. To which Marie replies that no doubt all these things are true, but other things also are true-too true. Marie's father is a coal miner. Now it happens that for two years past conditions in the coal fields of Indiana have been such that he has been working only two days each week. He tries to get other work to piece out a living wage, but nearly three hundred other men are also trying the same thing, so he is not very successful. Her mother does two washings a week, the proceeds of which together with what her father earns just barely serving to pay current bills and the building and loan dues on the home, while they await a return of better days. For two years they have succeeded in keeping Marie in school in spite of unfavorable conditions. They still could do so if Marie were not going to be a senior. But this year Marie would be a senior. She would need not only clothes and books, but the wherewithal to take her part in a considerable social whirl. There is first of all a class ring that must be bought, then there is a subscription to the school annual, plus the cost of a new photograph and an engraver's cut-for what would life be to a senior if her picture were left out of the an nual. Every loyal senior must buy a season ticket to the athletic games. If she does not she is a slacker; so says everybody, including the principal. The football team must be equipped and supported even if there is not much of a library, and a still more meager laboratory. Then there are a few dancesreal affairs, with all the appurtenances of such functions among people who are much, yea, very much better off financially than Marie and most other members of her class. The custom is to prorate the cost of these affairs on the members of the class, whether they go or not. There are also some banquets put on in style, ending with an alumni banquet at commencement time; and in these prosperous days, who ever heard of a banquet at less than three dollars a head? Finally there is the commencement itself. The invitations must be engraved on the finest stock. Not to order at least a dozen would be to acknowledge low breeding. There must be hot-house roses or expensive cut flowers-the flowers growing in profusion in the town gardens are too common for such an occasion. In short, everything must be better and, above all things, costlier than it was last year, though it drive the last happy parent into financial ruin. Altogether it would cost Marie something more than seventy-five dollars exclusive of clothes to keep the pace, even if this year's class should not far outstrip the one of last year a thing which it is, of course, in honor bound to do. Now in a small city, to be in high school and not in the social whirl is a physical impossibility. Already last year Marie felt herself dreadfully humiliated and chagrined when she was the only girl at the Junior Senior Banquet without a new party dress. Marie's father will not borrow money— perhaps he couldn't if he would-to help Marie keep up with society in school. Marie can't earn it herself, for competition for work that a high school girl can do is keen in a city where over two hundred families are situated exactly like Marie's. And Marie won't go to school unless she can be in the social whirl. So Marie is quitting school. This ends the story of Marie, but it makes us question several things. First of all how many hundreds of Maries are there in this broad land of opportunity and democracy? And how many hundreds of others who stay in school do so at the price of a real but unnecessary sacrifice by other members of their families? Again if some or all of the social functions are really so conducted as to be a valuable part of the educational program of the school-as they should be-should not they be paid for in the same way as physics and algebra are paid for? Or are the social graces less important than a knowledge of, say, plane geometry? And after all how much of the extra expense of being a senior is really a necessary and valuable part of the educational program? What, for example, is the educational value of a twelve dollar class ring, or of seven dollars worth of engraved commencement invitations? Last and most important of all we wonder whether we really have a right to boast a democratic school system in a democratic society, when we permit the secondary school, the most vital single safeguard of democracy, to become aristocratic in effect through a senselessly expensive social pace among the pupils. FITTING THE UNFIT ISAAC DOUGHTON [It is more than twenty years since a committee of educational missionaries of the faculty of the Washington Irving High School, New York City, produced a composite sermonette entitled "Success in School" and appalled the high schoolers in many cities by asserting that school is for the youth and not for standards. William H. Allen reprinted it as a tract and distributed it by thousands. Chester Parker ridiculed it in his first edition of Teaching in the High School; later editions commend it. Here is a teacher of teachers, of the State Normal School, Mansfield, Pennsylvania, making this idea the basis of his life's work. Who says we are not moving?] N° TO FACT of life is more important in education than the fundamental biologic fact of diversity. Emerson reminds us that "nature never rhymes her children nor makes two men alike." Indeed, it may safely be said that there are no identities in nature, in spite of many resemblances. And no two children are endowed with precisely the same capabilities. While this statement is now somewhat commonplace in light of the recognition which we in the schools have tried to give to individual differences in the last decade or two, its reiteration here is important. Throughout the centuries teachers have taught as though they believed that if nature has never yet rhymed her children she should have done so; at least, that her bright and more capable children should be brought to a uniform standard of attainment. The function of the school until comparatively recent times appears to the student of education to have been twofold: first, to winnow out from among the many stupid the few intellectual children (in practice, the children gifted with excellent verbal memory); and second, to bring these intellectuals, if possible, to a high but uniform level of accomplishment. The recognized function of the teacher has thus for ages been one of selection. Much as Burbank carefully chooses from a host of specimens a very few with which to experiment, so the teacher has been keen to search for and happy to find "the lads of pairts," as Macclaren's old Scotch dominie called them, and to concentrate upon these. Of course, the dominie's record was noteworthy. "Seven ministers, four schoolmasters, four doctors, one professor, and three civil service men had been sent out from the auld schule in Domsie's time, besides many that had given themselves to mercantile pursuits." Moreover, one of his non-Latin lads became the greatest living authority on beetles. But we are not enlightened as to his work with the vastly larger number of scholars that had been in the auld schule. Their chief function seems to have been to pelt with pine cones the fortunates, like Geordie Hoo, in great gladness of heart because of his achievements or "to give their wages and live on skim milk and oat cake to let him have his chance." Viewed from another angle the process of education has through the centuries. been regarded as a process of elimination, and the waste that has resulted has had no parallel except in the seeming extravagance of nature. So important is the perpetuation of the species that nature takes no chances. For every seed that germinates many myriads do not; and millions of pollen grains never function in fertilizing seed cells. "A single codfish," says Fiske, "has been known to lay six million eggs within a year; yet all but perhaps a dozen or two of the six million must die." But the thriftless prodigality of nature is not real. Matter and energy are most carefully economized. The ungerminated seeds and the unfertilized cells, the conquered plants, insects, birds and beasts that have succumbed in the great struggle for existence must all give back their substance and energy to the general store. In reality, nature wastes nothing material; what appears to be waste is due to the fact that in the economy of nature the individual counts for nothing, it is the race that is all important. In contemplation of this fact Darwin was led to propose the theory of natural selection, or, as Spencer more aptly expressed it, "the survival of the fittest." Carried to one extreme this theory became the basis of Nietzsche's degrading, brutalizing philosophy of the Ubermensch, the superman, idealizing "the will to dominate (der Wille zur Macht)," and deifying animal passion. This philosophy has largely been responsible for the bloody story which history has had to record for recent years. Accepting the "struggle for existence" and the "survival of the fittest" as ultimate fact, it left nothing for the unfit but merciless elimination. Little wonder that the mind which could father such an insane philosophy of life should itself break, and that he who despised reason should lose what reason he had. And little wonder that a horrified world should so recoil from such a conception of life that men have been blinded as to what may be vital truth in the Darwinian theory. Life is a struggle for existence. Evidence on every hand shows that existence is earned only by effort. It is true that the effort is often vicarious, as for instance in the care which a mother gives her child. But fundamentally life is a struggle, and only those survive who become fitted to meet the conditions of survival. The great law of life, however, is not the “survival of the fittest," involving as it does a never-ending competitive struggle even among those who have met the primary conditions of survival; the law is rather the - survival of the fit. The logical outcome of the conception of life as a struggle is not the lordly egotism of Nietzschianism. It is our own dead selves, to borrow from Tennyson, not the dead selves of others, that we use as stepping stones to rise to higher things. The philosophy of the Galilean, despised by Nietzsche, is itself predicated upon the fact of the bitter struggle of life; but it teaches that in this struggle the effort is not competitive and eliminative but coöperative. Mutual helpfulness is thus one of its controlling principles. "The race of civilization and welfare," says Thorndike, "is not run to see who can go farthest, but to make all go as far as may be." While we recognize, therefore, the logical principle that governs survival, we regard it our duty not to facilitate the process of elimination, but to assist all so far as possible to qualify for survival. The altruism of Christianity, when rightly understood, leads not to degeneracy but to growth; it does not seek to nullify the law of the struggle of life, but to support it. The recognition of the individual's worth is a cardinal principle of our modern civilization; and the supreme law of civilization and progress has been, not the elimination of the unfit, but the fitting of the unfit. The effect of this law is vividly illustrated by the increasing expectancy of life. In 1751, according to one authority, fifty per cent. of the people of England died before reaching the age of twenty, while just prior to the great war fifty per cent. of the people of England reached the fifty-fourth year. In our own country, according to insurance records, the average expectancy of life has advanced from 49 years in 1901 to 57 years in 1924. The contrast in the destructive power of typhoid fever during the SpanishAmerican war and its comparative impotence during the world war is wonderfully significant. The hook-worm, long so destructive of vitality in the South, and yellow fever have been brought under the control of science through effective sanitation and right living. Among children especially has this decrease in mortality been most remarkable, due, for the most part, to the greater protection now thrown about infants, and |