Chapter V: Introduction (2)

Do you know that about one-fourth of all students who enter the freshman classes of our high schools, thruout the United States, drop out before the close of the first semester? Do you know, too, that the elimination continues right along until that one-fourth is made more than one-half before graduation day arrives? Now, these boys and girls enter full of hope and expectation, eager and ambitious for what the high school is supposed to do for them; they do not plan to drop out before completing the course--nor do their parents plan to have them do so. Why do they do it? What has changed their point of view and sent them from the school, sad and disappointed, and their parents dissatisfied with both school and child? What is it? Do you want me to tell you? The situation has been the subject of investigation in many places thruout the country, and the conclusion reached by thoughtful men and women, unbiased students of educational practises, is that, while many influences combine to bring about that unfortunate result, the chief cause of this high mortality is the unsympathetic attitude of high school teachers toward the adolescent. But, you may ask, why unsympathetic? Because they regard them as fickle, unstable, and irrational, and so have but little patience with them. I'll admit that the adolescent seems all that at times, but that is only on the surface. The developmental changes--physical and moral--thru which he is passing often make the life during this period one of turmoil. From fourteen to eighteen--the normal high school period--is frequently called the "storm and stress period" of life. Not having made a study of the situation, high school teachers, in the main, do not know the fundamental scientific facts, and therefore can not account for actions, points of view, signs of waywardness, lack of appreciation, poor lessons, etc., etc., that sometimes characterize the youth while a student in the high school. They often lay to an unclean mind what springs from a perfectly normal development of the sex function; they are sure that moral perversity is the basis of actions that are more correctly explained by reference to a moral nature merely in the process of development; they think that pure laziness alone explains the lack of vigorous work, whereas the boy is growing so fast that he has no strength for anything else; they scold him for being awkward and say it is due to carelessness and a slip-shod mind, because they do not know that the muscles sometimes grow faster than the bones, making accurate co-ordination a physical impossibility; in a word, to general, all round cussedness they charge behavior that should be referred to high blood pressure, aching bones, the knitting together by fiber growth of the various brain centers, and finally, to youthful enthusiasm, all of which are perfectly normal signs of developing youth. They do it because they do not know any better. They are ignorant of many things that touch, and vitally, the young people with whom they are working. But how could it be otherwise? They have never given any reflective thought to the matter. The term "half-baked" that they often apply to the adolescent in disgust, or in coarse jest, is, from this point of view, more applicable to themselves.

That, I say,--the unsympathetic attitude of the high school teacher toward the adolescent--is the chief cause of the high mortality of high school students. That, coupled with another, that springs from the same fundamental situation--ignorance of the needs and points of view of the adolescent--tho not so chargeable to the individual class teacher as to the school system as a whole, local, state, and national, pretty nearly cover the ground. The other cause to which I refer is the course of study and program of activities that are so ill-adapted to the tastes, and needs, and capacities of adolescent boys and girls--studies and activities that have no real meaning to them and that fit them for nothing definite save college entrance where the same old process, meaningless to many, often goes on for another period.

What is being done on the firing line to better such conditions? A good deal; quite a good deal. Normal schools and schools of education here and there, the former more than the latter, are now giving attention to the matter, requiring in some cases and urging in others, prospective teachers to become intelligent in regard to the lives they are to direct. It is being done at our own institution as at others. This year Dr. Todd has given instruction in child study to nearly one hundred young men and women who are looking forward to teaching in the grades, and I have had a group of some thirty-five or forty prospective high school teachers and superintendents who have been making a careful study of adolescence. I guarantee that these people will not make the crude and unfeeling blunders that I have mentioned as too common among high school teachers, as they run. These are firing-line activities. They were nearly new a dozen years ago. My introduction of such courses in our University was smiled at indulgently by some of my colleagues and sharply criticised, especially the work in adolescence, by others. They are not yet required of students preparing to teach, but have evidently demonstrated their value since, tho in no sense snap courses, they have become very popular.

As illustrative of this work let me refer to a notable recent action of the legislature of Iowa. It has just passed an Act appropriating to the State University $25,000 a year for the purpose of financing what is called a "child-welfare" campaign. The plan is to make an exhaustive scientific study of the child from both the physiological and psychological points of view, to the end that it may be better known and thus more satisfactorily guided in its educational career.

One other thing, in this same connection, is being done on our firing lines all over the country--something that is hoped will set the people at large, parents and citizens generally, to thinking sanely on educational matters and ere long rectify our blunders as to subjects of study and general school activities and thus result in sending the children out efficient workmen in suitable fields. I refer to addresses and discussions such as this and others, to articles in newspapers and magazines, and the educational press, and to even more extensive and thoro discussions put out in book form from time to time for the laymen.

The old darkey says, "The world do move." We sometimes think it moves very slowly, but yet it "do move." Tho we can't see it move, we can, by looking back, see that it has moved.

PHYSICAL EDUCATION

Another thing for which we are fighting out on the firing lines is an adequate system of physical education. This would include periodical medical inspection of every child from the kindergarten up; it would also include the school nurse and the visiting nurse, and, as well, free public clinics for ear, eye, nose, throat, and tooth difficulties. It would also include, for mental and moral as well as physical ends, well-equipt playground and gymnasium facilities under the direction of men and women expert and skilful in those fields--and these would be in operation the entire year.

The physical education of the child and adolescent should be as carefully planned, as scientifically workt out in a positive way, as the intellectual. Why not? Because you know--every intelligent person knows--that the physical is the basis for the mental and the moral. You know--we all know--that a sound, a healthy, a sane life can not be developt in an unsound or a diseased body. Then why are these activities merely on the firing lines and not a part of the regular program? Because ignorance, and prejudice, and selfishness, and stubbornness, and penuriousness are still keeping many people in the trenches. But they will be dislodged. Just as sure as fate they will be driven from cover. They are fighting a losing battle. They are standing in the way of an irresistible movement that is sure to engulf them. If there were time I should like to describe just what is being done along this line in some places and give the reflex influence of the same on the community. It has surely meant a new heaven and a new earth to many a child, and glimmerings of the same to many a community. But I pass to less spectacular matters, continuing to discuss principles rather than illustrations.

THE EDUCATIONAL SURVEY

Another matter of interest these days is the educational survey that has been taken up by many progressive communities. The plan is, as many of you know, to subject the school system of a city or community to a searching investigation in order to discover, if possible, its weak points, if it has any, to the end of their betterment. Experts are brought in who, without fear or favor, examine the system from all possible points of view--location and arrangement of school buildings including heating, lighting, and general health conditions, adequacy of playground and athletic facilities, the extent to which the schools are satisfying community needs in the way of equipt workmen and the needs of the young people for equipment for suitable work, the cost of the system, attendance, methods of teaching and supervision, course of study, etc. Outside experts are brought in for various reasons: known to have no personal interest in the outcome, their reports are likely to be received with greater respect; and, too, a local committee, thru nearness and very familiarity, would fail to notice features, good as well as bad, that might at once attract the attention of strangers. Many cities, ranging from 2500 to half a million people, have already availed themselves of the survey with, in the main, very gratifying results. Not only have cities used the survey, but other units of educational administration. There have been a few very significant and interesting rural school surveys by counties in several states. A similar study has been made of several State universities, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nevada, for example. I notice that the legislature of Minnesota has just arranged for a survey of theirs. You all recall that such a survey was made of all the institutions of higher education of North Dakota only a short time ago. The general feeling is that it was well worth while. Such and even more extensive surveys have already been made in five other states--Oregon, Iowa, Washington, Colorado, and Wyoming. The end sought in each and all of these surveys, whether city schools, higher institutions, or state-wide systems, is greater efficiency--larger service to society. A survey of this character is usually followed by a detailed printed report that is generously distributed resulting in greater interest in the schools and a more intelligent appreciation of their work and their needs.

VOCATIONAL GUIDANCE

Much has been said in recent years about vocational education. The schools have been severely criticised for not teaching trades. Many have demanded that that be the dominating motive in all our schools, especially in the high schools. The educational press, for the last decade, has kept the matter in the limelight. Books have been written calling attention to the heavy dropping out of school of pupils even before reaching high school age wholly unfitted to do anything above the most menial and lowest-paid work. They have argued strenuously and sometimes logically for better things. To this program the objection has been raised that children in these early years are not yet ready to choose their work of life; that they do not yet sufficiently know themselves--their own tastes and capacities for such serious choice; it has also been urged that to place before children such attractive objective features would result in swerving many from the normal pathway of their development and check it midway. The result has been what might be called a compromise, and the firing-line activities have been somewhat modified. Not vocational education but vocational guidance is now more nearly the thought. And this has a much larger content, a background, a more scientific basis, and one organically connected with the larger movement of which I have already spoken--the social motive in education supplemented by the individual involving the discovery and development of taste and capacity.

I have already called attention to the high mortality of high school students. The reasons I have given are the lack of sympathy that the teacher has with the adolescent and the lack of meaning found in the work being done. The same facts account for the heavy elimination that takes place in the upper grades of the elementary school. But both are being remedied to some extent. The first thru the child-study movement and the second thru the matter of vocational guidance. And the two are very closely connected as one can see at a glance. Thru the child-study movement the teacher comes to know child nature so well that direct application can be made to the individual child and an intimate knowledge gained of his tastes, capacities, ambitions, and dominant interests. This will enable her to give the subject matter definite meaning in the early years, and, later on, when vocations begin to attract, the guiding may be intelligent and the final choice a suitable one. From the beginning of the adolescent period there should be opportunities furnished by the school or thru its co-operative effort for children to test themselves in various lines--academic lines, vocational lines. They should, in a word, be vocationally tempted in as many different directions as possible so as to come to know themselves so well that the final settling will not be haphazard. In these ways they should be guided into their vocations, definite ones, just as early in life as they can be adequately prepared for them. For example:--if his tastes and capacities fit a certain boy for merely a mechanical pursuit that requires but little academic learning, such as carpentry, plumbing, blacksmithing, brick laying, etc., he should, relatively early in the adolescent period, be thus guided, and not forced to attempt an academic course that can have no possible meaning to him. This would send him out, a productive member of society, happy in his work because suited to him and efficient in it because fitted for doing it well. If, on the other hand, tastes and capacities fit for academic or professional careers, such as medicine, law, teaching, or engineering, the principle would remain the same but the program would differ. The academic work, meaningless to the prospective plumber, or dressmaker, would be full of meaning to the embryo lawyer or teacher, and the period of preparation much prolonged.

Such are the points of view that teachers should hold, and such the opportunities that schools should offer. And it is all being found out on the firing lines. This program is being carried out to some extent in many places in different parts of the country. The time is not very far distant when something of the kind will be demanded in all our towns. For out in the front ranks the high school is no longer regarded chiefly as a preparatory for college. Out there it is seen to possess a much larger function--assisting the child--every child--to form its own acquaintance and to begin the planning of its future. In other words, the thought on the firing line is that the high school is an institution established by a community for community purposes--to take its young people--all of them--and guide them thru the difficult and transitional period of adolescence, directing, inspiring, shaping, checking, developing for the largest manhood and womanhood possible and providing the community with efficient workmen in various lines.

THE EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST

While there are many other activities, significant and interesting, that might well be considered in such a treatment as this, I shall close with a very brief mention of one more--the place and work of the educational psychologist in our modern system.

One of the most significant of the newer movements in educational procedure is that termed _educational mesurements_, perhaps better called the _mesurement of intelligence_. About a generation ago it began to be observed that many children did not pass thru the grades with the regularity that was thought normal or desirable. Many were obliged to repeat grades--they did not "pass," to use the language of the schools. The more the matter was investigated, the more serious was it seen to be. Investigation has gone on until at last carefully gathered statistics tell us that almost, if not quite, one-half of all the children in the schools fail to progress thru the grades at the expected rate. For some reason, or for some combination of reasons, they are retarded from one to three years. And of the $400,000,000 annually spent to carry on the work of the schools it is estimated that from $40,000,000 to $50,000,000 go every year in attempts to teach these retarded ones what they have already tried but failed to learn. Here was a double loss, a financial one of large proportions and a human one of much more serious import. Why the retardation? And what could be done to check it?

Thoughtful consideration was given to the matter with the following revelation: it was seen that in educational procedure all matters of grading, promotion, even choice of subject matter where there was a choice, were being handled on the basis of results of tests of information--possession of knowledge facts--rather than of ability or intelligence. This might not be so bad if the knowledge sought in these tests were knowledge necessary to have in order to function adequately in the new or advanced environment. But usually no such relationship could be traced. It was but another illustration of no present meaning connected with the work of the school. A remedy was sought, and is being sought, in trying to substitute for the information test a test of intelligence. It is generally admitted that neither one is an adequate mesure of the other. A child may have a very high grade of intelligence and yet make a very poor showing in the ordinary schoolroom test for knowledge, not that he has been unable to learn such facts but merely that his interests and attention have not been thus focust. On the other hand, it is entirely possible for one of low-grade intelligence to receive a very creditable "mark" in a test for information since it is frequently a test of verbal memory, that "great simulator of intelligence," as Binet calls it.

One of the most interesting of the books bearing upon this new educational movement is _The Measurement of Intelligence_ by Professor Terman of Leland Stanford University. In the thoughts just exprest I have used material found in this book.

So, for a few years now, educational psychologists have been trying to work out a series of tests of intelligence, so that children may be located on the basis of their general intelligence, or ability to accomplish results. The results so far are very promising as tending to eliminate much of the loss mentioned above. And out on our firing lines the educational psychologist is being looked upon as a necessity in any system looking forward to real efficiency. It is thought that thru the saving he could effect in the two directions cited his regular employment would be a matter of economic foresight. A few years ago it was the school physician who was being fought for out in the front ranks. He is now a fixture in every up-to-date school system, and it is the psychologist for whom battle is now being waged. And it is only a question of time when his position will be secure and the line pushed forward for another attack.

I have discust with you briefly some of the interesting points of view of the education of to-day. I have tried to place before you, first, what I think to be its dominant motive--social betterment, made effective thru discovery and development of the individual's tastes and dominant interests. To show how this program is becoming established and worked out, I have touched upon various new lines of activity in sympathy with and contributing to the general movement. Thus I discust briefly the great child-study movement having for its goal knowledge of the individual child as a basis for its educational treatment. Following this I spoke of physical education--its beginning in many places and the great need for extension. Another activity named was the educational survey by means of which a community may have its own educational activity tested by impartial experts that its real efficiency may be known. Then followed brief discussion of the new movement for vocational guidance that is doing so much where being used to make the youth efficient and happy in his chosen and appropriate field of activity. I closed the discussion with a mention of a still newer movement having the same great ends in view--the employment of the educational psychologist. Firing-line activities all of these are, each vigorous and active in the great movement for educational betterment.

II

THE RELATION OF THE STATE UNIVERSITY TO THE HIGH SCHOOLS OF THE STATE

_An Address delivered before the Annual Conference of the North Dakota Superintendents and Principals at the University of North Dakota, May 18, 1916_

This is a topic of great interest to us all--to you in the field and to us here on the campus. The work of the two institutions is so closely related, each depends so much upon the other, that participation in the activities of one bespeaks interest in the other. But before we can discuss at all intelligently the matter of relationship it will be necessary to look at the two separately--objectively, as it were--to note the function of each and its place in the educational system of the State. What is the university? What is the high school? And what is the work of each? are questions that must first be answered.

In the first place, of course, the two are but parts of a still larger whole, neither being an independent, self-sufficing entity. The larger whole is the educational system of the State, of which there is one other part equally important with the two named, even the elementary school. And all three parts forming the whole are creations of the State, devised, controlled, and maintained for a very definite purpose--namely, the welfare and happiness of our people.

While it is true that the three parts are correlative, each supplementing the others and the system incomplete without all three, it is also true that they are co-ordinate, no one of the three being, _per se_, in authority over any other, nor any one subordinate to another. Let me put before you, very briefly, that we may all be thinking together, the system in its outlines and then discuss each of its parts, trying to discover its function and its node of work. Then we shall pass to the matter of relationship.

The system as a whole covers and tries to provide for the entire school life of the individual. The elementary period, or department, includes, in the main, as now organized, the work of the first eight years of the child's school life and ministers to it from the age of six to fourteen years. The secondary, beginning where the elementary closes, carries on the work for four years and is followed by the higher, the colleges and the professional schools--the university.

It may clarify matters somewhat and thus give us a clearer perspective, if, before, entering upon the discussion, I account for the system as we have it to-day.

Our Colonial forefathers in the Old Bay State, back in the 17th century, in providing to meet the situation that prest upon them, unconsciously laid the foundations for an educational system that expanded with their expansion and developed with their development. But before taking the initial steps they did not wait to analyze the entire situation and upon logical or philosophical grounds map it out in its entirety. They had no such thought. They needed ministers of the Gospel and, since a knowledge of Latin was the one sure gateway to that profession, they established a Latin school almost as soon as they had set their own dwelling places in order. This was in 1635, and Harvard College followed the very next year to complete the preparation. It was an afterthought and came eleven years later when they legislated for an elementary school. And even tho we can see, in what they had then produced, the fundamental factors of our present somewhat complicated system, the people who were responsible for its organization were only dimly conscious of the significance of it all. They builded better than they knew. The broad outlines can not be improved. Details, of course, are ever changing as local conditions change, but from the very nature of things, the elementary, the secondary, and the higher schools have remained with us, each for a quite definite purpose and all working together for a common end. Let us look, therefore, for a moment, at each of the three and see for what it stands and what it should attempt to do.

THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL

The fundamental purpose of the elementary school in a democracy is well stated in the first legislation on the continent touching elementary education, tho not mentioning the elementary school. It was in the Massachusetts colonies in 1642. The General Court passed an ordinance of which the following quotation gives the substance:

"This Court, taking into consideration the great neglect of many parents and masters in the training of their children in labor and learning, and other employments which may be profitable to the commonwealth, do hereupon order and decree that in every town the chosen men appointed for managing the prudential affairs of the same shall henceforth stand charged with the care of the redress of this evil ... and for this end they, or the greater number of them, shall have the power to take account, from time to time, of all parents and masters, and of their children, concerning their calling and employment of their children, especially of their ability to read and understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of this country; and they shall have power ... to put forth as apprentices the children of such as they shall find not to be able and fit to employ and to bring them up."

Here was compulsory elementary education, that children might know how to read, might "understand the principles of religion and the capital laws of the State," and also that they might be taught to work. And why? For their own present and future welfare, and that they might be "profitable to the commonwealth," the document reads.

It was for all the children of all the people. The same thought is with us to-day and, analyzed and stated in our present-day terminology, may be put about as follows:

The elementary school is for all the people and aims to do for all three things: first, exercise a positive directive influence over the child's physical development; second, carry on, in a more systematic, scientific manner the training of the sense organs already begun by the home, thus opening up the life to the beauties of nature, art, and other forms of truth, and so providing for the development of the inner life of each in accordance with inherent leaning and capability; and, third, equip them with the tools of knowledge and give such knowledge facts and develop such points of view as will enable each to become a self-directing, constructive, and contributing member of his democratic community.

Attendance upon the elementary school should, in the interests of all as individuals and of the State as an organization, be compulsory.

THE HIGH SCHOOL

The high school should likewise be for all, tho for a somewhat different purpose. While attendance should not be compulsory, the aim should be to make it universal. For a somewhat different purpose, I said; I should perhaps have said for an added purpose, because I would have the three ends of the elementary school kept constantly in view as fundamental bases. But, assuming that these things have been well done, the chief purpose of the high school should be to discover the child's latent powers, his dominant interests, and then, so far as these are wholesome, help him plan his education in their general direction. I might put it briefly thus: the chief function of the high school should be to help the child to become acquainted with himself and begin the planning of his future. Let us look at it carefully and see if it is not sound.

At the conclusion of the elementary school, at the age of 14, the boys and girls are still children; they are developing, not developed, in either body or mind. They have not yet reached, in the main, the period of rapid acceleration of physical growth, intellectual expansion, or moral development; they are just reaching it; they are now in the early stages of that wonderful period of adolescence when the boy is being transformed into the man and the girl into the woman. They are neither children nor adults, yet manifesting the characteristics of both. They do not know themselves, nor does any one else know them intimately. How can they? They are not yet formed. They are in the process of formation. What will emerge as a result of the process, we know only in broad outlines--not at all in minute detail. So many factors are at work and there are possible so many combinations of factors that no one can tell; for it is during the period of adolescence that hereditary characteristics show themselves. Up to this time the child is a child of the race; during this period it becomes the offspring of its parents. And the factors of heredity--father, mother, ancestry--are mingling and clashing and combining with the factors of environment, and what the outcome is going to be, nobody knows, in specific cases, in advance.

This is the period when the heart, the lungs, and the brain are being transformed, modified, whipt into shape for the performance of the duties of adulthood. It is a period when, in the intellectual realm, because of what is taking place in the physical, concepts are being clarified, relationships traced, ideas formed, things seen in the right perspective, and real reasoning begun. It is the period when, in the moral field, because of what is being accomplished in the physical and the intellectual, principles are being apprehended that will finally enable the individual to distinguish between right and wrong, to organize on principle rather than upon expediency his relationships with his fellows, and eventually to become a free moral agent, self-controlled and self-directed. It is the period, therefore, when ideals are being formed, habits fixt, character shaped, life plans matured, and professions chosen.

And so, with such an individual and during such a period, what other function of the high school can begin to compare, either in importance or in appropriateness, with the one stated?

It may be objected that I do not include in this function of the high school that which has been during a large portion of its history its foremost work--preparation for college. The seeming omission has not been accidental. I say the _seeming_ omission because, even tho not specifically stated, it is there, for all who should be encouraged to prepare for college. But it has not been made prominent since, in my judgment, it is of minor importance. Note again the function as suggested--to help the child know himself, find out what he wants to do and what he can do best, and then begin getting ready for doing it well. If the specific form of future activity decided upon in a particular instance should call for the contribution of the college, then of course the plan mentioned would include appropriate preparation.

But from what point of view should the high school be regarded and for whom should it be planned? Should it be for the relatively few who go beyond, or for the great majority who do not? It is a fair question and admits of but one answer. The high schools of the State must, of course, give adequate preparation for entrance into the State university. Some of them must--not necessarily every one. It must be the preparatory school, since both are State institutions and the only ones occupying the field. But it should do vastly more than that. Being of the people, by the people, and for the people, it should be so handled as to serve all, not merely a few, of the people. It is perfectly plain, therefore, where the emphasis should be placed.

Please do not misunderstand me; I am not looking upon this from any narrow point of view, I am not thinking merely of getting these children ready for jobs--certainly not all of them. I am not advocating the transforming of our high schools into trade schools--not at all. What I am urging primarily is a different point of view--and so enlarging and modifying our high school activities and equipment that all our children, instead of only a few, may find there a congenial atmosphere and activities suited to their tastes. If their tastes lie in the direction of carpentering, or of plumbing, or of dress-making, well and good; let them be thus developed and prepared to go out into their community somewhat equipt for remunerative toil and for community service. Why not? Are they not as worthy as those who have tastes and ambitions or a more literary character and who, therefore, look forward to the chair of the teacher, the office of the lawyer, or the practise of a physician? And is not the community under as much obligation to the one as to the other? Some fear that such a program would lessen the number preparing for college, that work of this objective character would be so attractive that all would choose it. These fears are groundless. Children are not all built that way. At any rate it would not lessen the number who ought to go to college--who are adapted to that kind of work. It would, of course, greatly increase the number attending high schools--holding those who now, because of lack of interest in the work offered, drop out of school entirely and thus swell the ranks of unskilled and unintelligent labor. And that is greatly worth while. My own feeling is, too, that out of the greatly increased attendance of the high school an even larger number than at present would find their way to the university, and that they would be better equipt in point of view and purpose than are many who enter under present conditions. This suggestion is made not to keep boys and girls out of the university, but to send them there with a purpose.

But there is oftentimes a misapprehension as to these two possible programs for the high schools. Preparation for college and preparation for life are by no means antagonistic. Preparation for college is the only kind of preparation for life for him who goes to college. And for him who, during his high school course, plans to go to college, but who at its close, finds himself unable to do so, for economic or other reasons, it should still be the best possible preparation for life that he could have made, and it will be if, as I am urging, it has all the time been based upon his own nature and seeking his normal development in the direction of his dominant interests. And preparation for life should be the very best kind of preparation for college, for him who later changes his plans and goes to college as well as for him who does not, since the college itself should be regarded as merely completing preparation for life. But a great many, the majority, no doubt, will not go to college, should not go to college, or to put it better, perhaps, need not go to college. The activities of life, psychical as well as manual, for which they are best adapted by native endowment, and in the performance of which they will, therefore, be happiest, and thru which they will, therefore, contribute most to the welfare of society, do not need for their satisfactory performance school preparation beyond the high school period. In other words, a great many boys and girls should not be urged to go to college. They should not if they do not have within them those characteristics of leadership which, developed, will make them leaders. The college graduate who, in later life, is a street car conductor, or a Pullman porter, or what-not, has largely wasted the time and money spent in college. And this is not because these occupations are not honorable, but because they do not call for that kind of preparation. And the kind of an individual who is at home as a street car conductor does not usually profit greatly by the work of the college. I will not put it as David Starr Jordan is said to have done, that "It does not pay to give a fifty-cent boy a five thousand dollar education." It is not a question of dollars and cents--rather one of fitness and of fitting. The so-called "fifty-cent boy" who may have been given the "five thousand dollar education" and because of its inappropriateness degenerated into a ten-cent man, might have been made into a thousand dollar man if he had been given the right kind of education. The boy who has the instincts of a blacksmith, who likes the shaping of iron and the shoeing of horses and the smell of the forge, will be a far happier and more useful member of society as a blacksmith than, made over by the college, as a lawyer without clients, a physician without patients, or a teacher always hunting a new position.

I have discust the high school, as you see, from the point of view of the developmental needs of the children of the community. The outcome would have been practically the same had I looked upon it from the standpoint of the industrial needs of the community. I fully believe that a high school should be to-day just what it was originally planned to be back there in the first half of the nineteenth century--a school higher than the elementary, controlled by the community, in co-operation with the educational leaders of the State, serving the needs of the community, fitting its boys and girls for service in the community and discriminating, if at all, in the favor of the group of boys and girls who are not going to college, since that group is much the larger. Since boys and girls are nearer to us than industrial needs, I have chosen to look at the problem from that angle.

I am well aware that my point of view in this entire matter is not quite in accord with the present-day program. The American high school still has preparation for college as the one dominant object. Its curriculum is planned for that end. It is rated at first, second, or third class, depending upon the degree in which it meets college entrance requirements--not upon the degree in which it serves the community needs or develops the community's children.

I realize fully that the change suggested would involve quite a decided rearrangement of the ordinary high school program. With the time at my disposal it will be impossible to discuss the matter in detail, but it should be touched upon briefly to get the matter of relationship clearly before us.

The first change would be in the matter of organization: instead of having the elementary school, as now, covering eight years and closing with the child at the age of 14, it should cover but six years, sending the child to the high school at about the age of 12, at which time, approximately, begin those physical and psychological changes earlier spoken of, as belonging to adolescence. And that thought has taken root, as we all know, in the junior high school movement. Six years is long enough to do well all that the elementary school should be expected to do. It certainly is as long as children can be held interested in the kind of work thought necessary for the child, and as long as he can be happy in the atmosphere of the ordinary elementary school. It is long enough for the laying of foundations. It is time something else should be taken up.

Planning to meet the needs of adolescents, we must take the adolescents as they are--many of them not primarily students of books, but individuals of ceaseless activity, physical as well as mental, vastly more interested in the doing of things than in the learning of lessons. And we must provide a means whereby they can learn to do all sorts of things that have to be done in the community. The subject matter, the methods of handling young life, the atmosphere, the activities, and the ends in view, should be so changed or modified, or supplemented as to be appropriate to the new and changing personalities to be affected by them. The details would differ with different communities but the principle is adaptable to all.

THE STATE UNIVERSITY

With the functions of these two departments thus clearly in mind, let us look at the next in order--the State university. Fortunately this discussion need not detain us long since there is a quite well recognized unanimity of opinion in regard to its work.

While the State university does many things, and some of them well, and while it can be said to have many ends in view, its one all-inclusive function is to prepare leaders for society. It must prepare leaders in law, that justice may be done; leaders in medicine that health may be preserved; leaders in engineering that the State's resources may be developed; leaders in education that the youth of the State may be educated; leaders in research that the boundaries of knowledge may be pushed out--leaders all along the line that character may be formed, statesmanship developed, and the welfare of the people secured and preserved. And the preparation of all these is not, primarily, that those prepared may achieve fame or amass fortunes, but that society may be better served.

We are all agreed, in the United States, that elementary education should be universal. Many are now taking the position that I have already advanced that secondary education should likewise reach and serve all. But all stop at that point. No one even suggests a college education for every boy and girl. And the reason is found in the above statement of the function of the institution, since not all are suited to leadership. It takes only the relatively few who stand out clearly in their high school experiences as possessing the characteristics of leadership, and these few it develops, equips, locates.

Coming a little closer to our subject--tho I think we have not been very far from it at any time--let us inquire as to this relationship along some more specific lines.

It goes without saying that the relationship should be very cordial. The two institutions are creatures of the State, partners in the important work of educating the children of the State. Each has its own work to do, and neither has been given any authority over the other. At the same time each depends upon the other, neither being able to do its own work without the other's assistance. They should work hand in hand, each assisting the other in every possible way to realize its largest usefulness to the community and the State. In general, the high school should send its students to the university well equipt to do the lines of work for which they respectively apply. And the university, knowing in each case just what that work is to be, and the difficulties it presents, should be the judge as to the details of that equipment.

On the other hand, the university should not make requirements for beginning its work that are beyond the capacity of the ordinary high school student. Nor should it definitely require or legislate against specific subjects upon which there is no general agreement among educational leaders. Something is wrong somewhere, in the matter of educational values, when some colleges absolutely prescribe for entrance certain subjects for which others will give no credit at all: for example, at the present time 91 colleges in the United States require at least one unit of natural science and 8 colleges will not accept a single unit; again, 13 require 2 units of natural science and 22 will not accept the two. Until we know a little better than we do at present what we are doing and why we are doing it, it might be well to move slowly in legislating for or against specific subjects. The university should keep in mind the fact that the high school has other duties to perform--and possibly more important ones--than preparing a few students for the university.

I am glad to say that in this matter of entrance requirements the two institutions are gradually coming closer together. The university is coming to have greater respect for and more confidence in the high school and its work. Whereas in the earlier days all entrance work was rigidly prescribed, now, in nearly all of our higher institutions, several units are open to free choice from a list of accepted subjects. In a goodly number these units may be chosen from any subjects offered by an approved high school. And, too, there are five institutions of good standing that allow the entire 15 units to be thus chosen. Our own, as you doubtless know, is much more generous in this matter than the great majority. It gives a margin of 5 units to be thus selected. I think there are but 9 institutions in the whole country more liberal. As you know, too, in all our colleges save Engineering we specifically require but 4 units--3 in English and 1 in mathematics. From the others free election among groups is allowed. The movement here and elsewhere seems to be in the direction of requiring the completion of a full four-year high school course, with increasing flexibility as to specific subjects. And that seems wise.

It gives me pleasure, at this point, to say that the relationship between the University of North Dakota and the high schools of the State has ever been most cordial. I think there has never been a time when the two, tho differing at times in details, have not co-operated in the most frank and cordial manner to bring about the best good of both and to secure the best service to the State. Neither one has been selfish, trying to secure undue advantage over the other. Where domination of the university over the high school can be seen--as it most certainly can be seen--and even tho, as I have said, the work of the high school is what it ought not to be--mainly a preparation for the university--_this_ University and _these_ high schools are not at fault. It is not a local situation. It is nation-wide, and even nation-wide as it is, it does not include, consciously and directly, the State universities. The older colleges and universities did dominate, but the relation between the State university and the high school has ever been cordial. They have always recognized their partnership and have acted in accordance with it. But yet we have all been caught in the maelstrom, and it would be difficult for any one institution or any one State to get out of it. So no immediate or rapid change can be expected. Large bodies move slowly. The change will come, but it will come gradually thru claiming a little here and granting a little there.

But before leaving this topic of entrance requirements, I desire to refer to one of its broad factors and touch, incidentally, upon the large matter of university attendance in general. In discussing the high school, and again the university, I have tried to make clear the fact that not all high school students should be urged or expected to go on to the university. Remember that the high schools should be made to serve all the youth of the State but that the university's work is to take but the choice ones of these, or, better yet, the scholarly output of the high schools, and equip them for leadership in society, and the point is clear. It is a new problem but coming to be a very real one. Going to college is getting to be the fashion--almost a fad in some places. We all know that a goodly number of students, boys and girls alike, enter the universities, East and West, every year who have no characteristics of leadership, who are not fitted for real university work, either in academic equipment, maturity of judgment, point of view, or earnestness of purpose. Many of these young people are wholly worthy, well meaning, and ambitious in a weak way, but they have been misguided. They have listened to the attractive preaching of the popular but unintelligent gospel of college attendance for all and, caught by the glamor--the foot-ball, the track meet, the declamation contest, the fraternity pin, the Junior prom, etc.--have answered the hail of "All aboard for the University!" without knowing what university work really is or what it is for.

The college and the university are also coming to be thought a convenient place for rich fathers to dump their incorrigible sons and marriageable daughters for a few years. And in some sections these rich fathers are increasing in numbers at an alarming rate. The presence of all such people (they can not be called students) in various classes is a drag, and the wheels of the institution are clogged. These people themselves are soon disillusioned but ashamed to quit; the home people are dissatisfied with results; the university is unjustly blamed for not developing them into leaders--there is trouble all around. I am not speaking of our own institution alone; others are experiencing the same difficulty and are seeking a way out. Michigan University, for example, is now urging its alumni to discriminate carefully in sending students to their Alma Mater; it wants only those fitted by nature as well as by the preparatory school.

As said above, this is coming to be a real problem and difficult of solution. What shall be the relationship of the university to the high school touching these various classes of its graduates? Should it receive them all? If not, where shall the line be drawn? And who shall draw it? Shall one factor of the entrance requirements be the recommendation of the high school principal or superintendent? Would it be well for the high school to have two distinct grades: one for local graduation and a higher for university entrance? That is done in some places. The entire matter is worthy of careful thought of both high school and university.

With the discussion of one more point of contact, the preparation of teachers for the high schools, I am thru.