us would be to say that war is a perversion of the instinct of combativeness; none the less a perversion because it is so nearly universal. Combativeness can be expressed in a great variety of ways, many of which are socially useful and individually beneficial. It does not need suppression. What it does need is to be safeguarded from perversion into war, and to become sublimated into socially valuable activities. If combativeness can be perverted into racial destruction by environmental influences alone, as the theory now before us contemplates, then, surely, it can be sublimated into constructive activities by other environmental influences. To remove the first set of influences, and to replace them with a different set, is the first great problem of education for peace.

I wish that I could outline a program for educational reconstruction along these lines that would be satisfactory even to myself. I cannot do it. The construction of such a program, it is safe to say, will be achieved by no one man, probably by no single generation, and possibly will never be perfected at all. But nothing of value can be done toward its development until the need for it has come to be recognized, not by one nation only, but by civilized mankind. The first great task is to preach the gospel of education for peace, leaving the details of the program for the future. For the sake of concreteness, however, let me offer a few suggestions.

There is, I think, a distinct exaggeration of the military side in the history courses in our schools, as well as some perversion of the record in the interests of a mistaken patriotism. Also, it seems to me, the glory of war is exalted, while its futility and brutality are ignored. In teaching the causes of war, too little is said of national cupidity, egotism, and jealousy, or of the times and places where more honesty and generosity might have paved the way to peace. Similarly, in the teaching of results, too much stress is laid upon political consequences and too little upon the racial and cultural havoc that has ensued. I do not plead for a representation of war as less important and more terrible than it actually is, but rather that it shall

not be pictured as more important or less terrible. The error lies today, I think, in giving to military heroes and events more attention than they deserve, in occasionally concealing facts that are not flattering to our national egotism, and in exhibiting only the specious glamor of war. My plea is for a factual rather than a factual rather than a “jingoistic" presentation of a nation's war record, to children in school.

Education, as I conceive it, should be as truthful as the biassed mind of man can make it. Propaganda that dwarfs or twists the truth is out of place in the schools, whether it have war or peace for its objective. And there is no need for truth-twisting. Just the whole truth, or even the representative truth, about war is enough. At present, it seems to me, this truth is not told; but the story is colored in favor of war.

Another contribution that the school might make, I think, is to cultivate a more objective attitude toward the facts in our international relationships. Our group relations of all sorts, and particularly our national relations, are pretty largely governed by pride and prejudice. In these affairs we are hot-headed and emotional when we should be particularly cool-headed and rational. The corrective seems to lie in cultivating more of the scientific attitude. There is, of course, no thought of trying to make full-fledged scientists out of all our boys and girls. But it seems to me practicable and eminently desirable to substitute so far as possible a factual, scientific attitude for the egotism and prejudice that are now so prominent in international affairs.

Also, I wonder why a systematic study of the characteristics and achievements of contemporary peoples could not be introduced with profit into the school curriculum. We now teach the oceans, continents, mountain ranges, and other outstanding natural phenomena. Why are not peoples as important to know about as mountains? It may be answered that this service is already being performed by geography, which is the study of the earth in its relations to human kind. But the objection to this answer is that,

properly enough, there is much more about the earth than about people in geography. It would seem that there is need for a more direct approach to the characteristics and achievements of the world's peoples.

Up to this point our remarks have dealt with the informational side of the educational program. More important even than this is the training or practice side, for the actual inculcation of habits, ideals, and attitudes. The way, for example, in which teachers in the mass deal with the individual and group quarrels of pupils is an important factor in promoting world peace. There are also many other ways in which the schools can cultivate the social attitudes of sympathy, coöperation, and good will. The combativeness and vainglory of children can likewise be given forms of expression in school which are socially helpful and constructive. However, this work of sublimating instincts still presents many knotty problems, the solutions of which are yet lost in the mazes of a contradictory psychology.

This discussion of the educational program is merely suggestive; it is not complete, nor necessarily correct. The suggestions that have been made may be partly or even wholly erroneous without affecting at all the truth of our main thesis. Our purpose is not to set up a program of education for peace, but to urge the importance of education as a factor in the larger peace movement. The suggestions made will serve to give concreteness to this theme, even while their imperfections must be acknowledged. So, leaving the matter of a program at this point, let us consider in conclusion two points that may be raised as arguments against our general theses.

In discussing this thesis with my friends and colleagues, I have frequently met the statement that, granting the importance of education in this matter, it is the informal educational agencies like the press, the pulpit, and the public forum that need reform, rather than the schools. Formal school education comes too early, and is too limited in scope and too remote from the facts of life to constitute a very dependable bulwark

against the assaults of jingoism. Newspapers and speech-makers are the real public educators in the vital concerns of peace or war. But to this point I would reply that, in the long run, the papers and preachers and politicians tell the people what they think the people want to hear. These agencies, I think, make less effort now than formerly to lead in the formation of public opinion, and more effort to follow and flatter the assumed bent of the public mind. I may be wrong in this belief; but if I am right, then we can place little reliance in these agencies in any program of educational reform. We must turn to the agency which, more than any other, can lay the foundations of correct public opinion. This is the school.

A second objection to the thesis of this paper, frequently confronted, is that the best hopes for world peace lie in organization rather than in education. Men will tend to keep the peace, we are told, if they are provided with peaceable means for preventing or settling their misunderstandings. Private warfare has been largely eliminated by government; and similarly, wars between governments must be controlled by agreements and organizations effected between them.

Let me say in answer, first, that I have had no thought of setting up public education as the sole means for promoting peace. This fact was made clear very early in this paper. A real movement for world peace must, of necessity, be a very complex affair. "War springs from many causes," we have already said, "and there must be as many corrective approaches." One cause is the lack of sure and adequate means for removing misunderstandings. One corrective approach, therefore, would naturally be the setting up of an international organization.

My second answer is that such education and such organization are mutually dependent. Some form of international organization is almost indispensable to an effective program of education for peace; and conversely, a properly directed public education, in all of the nations concerned, is necessary for successful organization. It is foolish to

hope that any one nation will educate its citizens into a state of enlightened helplessness so long as its neighbor nations continue to live in the jingoistic tradition. Such a course would be the most patent form of national suicide. Moreover, it would in no sense guarantee the peace; rather, it would invite invasion and spoliation, by its armed neighbors, of the new Utopia.

There are also to be considered the direct and indirect educational values to the participating nations of working together in an international organization. It is the substitution of practice for theory, of actuality for imagination; a substitution whose validity is recognized in every department of education where it can be made. The best way for peoples to come to know each other is through international dealings; not military, but of a sort that call for confidence and understanding. The organization can concern itself, also, with directly educational activities, as is illustrated by the work of scientists and educators in connection with the present League of Nations.

The other side of the argument is that an international organization rests finally upon the good-will and intelligence of the people who make up the several coöperating nations. It is as impossible to foster such organization upon the sentiments of national jingoism, as it is to develop the spirit of internationalism without having the fact to back it up. Each group of nationals must be made wise enough to prefer reason to bluster,

Each

progress to destruction, peace to war. must be made big enough in spirit to try to see its neighbors' point of view, and generous enough to make concessions that hurt its pride. People must be brought to see that, in national as well as in personal disputes, neither the rights nor the wrongs of the case are usually confined to one side, and that the larger humanitarian ends must take precedence over the narrower national objectives. An international organization which is founded on provincialism, distrust, selfishness, and greed among its members is already tottering to its fall.

The fundamental test of international organization, to my mind, is whether or not it recognizes definitely and promotes vigorously the cause of education for peace. Given the proper spirit between the peoples of the earth, there would be little need for organization, except to perpetuate the spirit. Lacking this spirit, organization will be of little avail. An organization that lends such confidence to its members that each is willing to draw the fangs of its people, that encourages them to do so, and that lends them substantial aid in the doing, is cleaving at the very root of war. But an organization which operates solely in the realms of superficial diplomacy, seeking to secure the selfish ends of all members and to escape the consequences, is absurdly trying to kill the tree by merely trimming up its branches. It is bound to fail, and to carry down with it all independent efforts at peace-sustaining education.

dam, scintillates with fervency and fire. Slang is the grab-it-on-the-run, eat-it-off-theshelf, digest-it-if-you-can, food of the quicklunch perpetrator, who had rather, for himself, step around the corner to a quiet nook for a well-cooked, neatly-served, time-taking meal. Slang is the mono-car of the onetrack mind However, slang, like the proverbial poor, we have always with us, and we must therefore do our best to make the most of a condition almost hopeless. To give a reason for its existence is like trying to account for dried-apple pie, or painted knees, or balloon trousers. The answer is, the projectors of each just simply didn't care what they did to humanity.

Slang has, no doubt, had its rise in the trade-terms of the professions and occupations. The tangy speech of the salt-sea sailor; the Melchizedekian jargon of the restaurant worker, and the cutting and descriptive language of the circus and carnival roisters, have all been contributors to our slang, ancient and modern. To illustrate, the circus and carnival men speak with little feeling for their customers and with less regard, it would seem, for their own stockin-trade. The man who sells soft drinks at the fair is running a "juice-joint." His brother worker with a novelty stand is dealing in “slum," and the magazine subscription solicitor is a "sheet-writer." The salesman of eye-glasses is a "glim-worker," and the side-show announcer is a "spieler." The man or woman who is always on hand to buy the first ticket is a "plant" or a "come-on," while the real customers, who "fall" for the "line" of the "spieler" are the "suckers." Any attraction is a "big flash." Many of these terms, we recognize, for they have crept, uninvited, into our language.

Another factor in the use of slang is found in certain periods and conditions. War times, when all classes are mixed in a hetero

geneous hodge-podge, give rise to a great deal of loosely spoken English and consequently to slang. Political campaigns; landbooms; national problems and great news events, all, unconsciously, make their contributions to our slang, for the mob-mind of our people will express itself in a vivid, if not forceful, way when under stress. The slang of political campaigns and of other definitely defined periods is subject to death and resurrection. Like truth, though crushed to earth, it rises again.

Slang is, in itself, a barometer of national life and spirit. If we, as a people, are careless in our thinking about the great problems which confront us, then we find that our language is taking on the same careless characteristics. If our habits of study are at low ebb, then we find that our shallow minds will seek for the quickest, easiest, and therefore laziest, mode of expression. If there is, in the land, a dearth of real "think-thingsout" folk, then the language of the schoolyard and of the cultured board will be culled from the drivel and dross of the gutter gammon. If we are dumb-headed sheep, following leaders as dumb or dumber than ourselves, then we may expect to bleat whenever the head-blatters bleat their blats.

To defend slang is a more difficult task than trying to find a reason for it. Rags, rather than neat, simple clothes, are not justifiable unless they are needed to express a picture or character, as for example, in a play. In such an instance, perhaps, slang might be justified. Of course, we do have a few words, which, because of their long usage, have been adopted into our language. At best, however, they are but foster children. Lastly, our slang does give us an insight into our American aptitude of "catching on." We are a nation of phrasesnatching, word-peddling, idea-copying addicts, and slang at its best shows us at our

worst.

-JOHN MILTON.

T

ODAY the history of education brings this country to the same crisis as in the time of Horace Mann; once more we are asked to choose between theological fundamentals and a religion of the spirit, between sectarian systems of philosophy and the spiritual creativeness of the modernist. Soon after Horace Mann became the Secretary of the Board of Education of Massachusetts the cry went through the land, "The public schools are God-less," and it is not a different cry from "Hell and the High Schools."

Centuries ago the Puritans were the modernists. They had a religion that met the creative needs of men. Dissenters are iconoclasts in one field but creators in another and everybody knows that the Puritans organized and vitalized a new state. The religion of old England was not only autocratic, it was impotent to help needy souls. Its finished creeds, its static systems of thought, were all it could offer to thousands of poor folks hungering and thirsting after social and economic independence. The Puritans did not travel across merely to enjoy the privileges of their heresy, to nurse in freedom their ecclesiastical dogmatism; they went in obedience to impulses of the creative spirit, in answer to opportunities in a new field of endeavor.

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The part that concerns us here is the Puritan influence upon education. We are all more or less familiar with the first general law providing for schools, enacted in 1647 by the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the preamble, of which began, "It being the one chief

project of old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures. Consequently it was ordered that elementary and Latin schools should be established throughout all towns according to the population. Other states followed the example of Massachusetts.

Such was the beginning of things. The schools were an establishment of the Church. Learning and religion were amalgamated forces the obverse and reverse side of the same educational process. It is doubtful, if anywhere, unless among the Scotch-Irish on the frontiers, the prevailing type of religious belief and ecclesiastical organization did so much to diffuse intelligence and promote education among the people.

But there was an unanimity of belief among the Puritans that gave them strength. Or shall we say there was a native spiritual strength in them that effected unanimity? It is significant, at any rate, that the school degenerated simultaneously with the growth of the divisive forces of Christianity. May we assume that in their desire to fasten upon society a certain doctrinal code, they sacrificed their moral dynamic; that in their eagerness to get the clinch hold of the dogmatist, they lost in the fight entirely? When religion ceases to become constructive it becomes a social canker, when churches go to war over their beliefs they no longer function for good in a social commonwealth. They have rotted and ought to be cast out. Nothing remains in religion but the husk of the thing when its creative spirit has died, and it is no wonder that in the first part of the