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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



treated simply as a piece of meclian- 

 ism which has to be put in order for 

 certain definite and servile ends. 

 The idea which dominates State edu- 

 cation is the idea of the struggle for 

 life, human being pitted against 

 human being in the scramble for 

 material goods. We do not blame 

 the State for this, for we do not hold 

 it to be capable of organizing educa- 

 tion on any higher plane. It can 

 keep an intellectual machine shop, 

 but it can not in any systematic 

 manner provide for the higher needs 

 of growing souls. It may go so far 

 as to enunciate bald moral pi-ecepts ; 

 but it can not pronounce the master 

 words which speak to the conscience 

 and dominate the life. 



So, as we have said, when the 

 citizen pays his taxes and packs his 

 children off to the public school, all 

 is not done. If the citizen thinks 

 the education of his children has 

 been sufficiently provided for, there 

 is a large chance that he will before 

 very long be rudely awakened to a 

 sense of his error. He will find that 

 character is something the proper 

 formation of which demands more 

 care and pains than either he or the 

 public school had thought of bestow- 

 ing, and that for want of the neces- 

 sary attention in this direction his 

 children are showing a serious lack 

 of any power of self guidance or 

 self-control. Thousands of parents 

 are to-day precisely in this position, 

 with children on their hands to 

 whose moral cultivation no proper 

 attention has been paid either at 

 school or at home, and who conse- 

 quently show alarming signs of 

 making shipwreck of life. The par- 

 ents thought so far as they thought 

 about it at all that the schools 

 would see to the matter, and the 

 schools threw back the responsibil- 

 ity on the parents : between the two 

 stools the children have come to the 

 ground. What parents should be 



made to understand once for all is 

 that if they leave the moral interests 

 of their children wholly in the hands 

 of the public school, those interests 

 will not and can not be adequately 

 provided for. Teachers may indi- 

 vidually do their best, but the public 

 school as an institution can not 

 strike the note that is necessary for 

 complete education. It can not 

 strike the note that Epictetus struck 

 in the sentence above quoted; and 

 yet, as we have said, unless the child 

 can be taught self reverence, he will 

 never learn to reverence anything, 

 and his whole life, aimless in any 

 noble sense, will drift among the 

 shoals of circumstance. 



Deeply interested as we are in 

 this view of the question, it was with 

 great pleasure that we read a few 

 weeks ago a letter in The Nation 

 from Mrs. Elizabeth Burt Gamble, 

 President of the Detroit Educational 

 Union, describing what had been 

 done in that city toward supplement- 

 ing the work and influence of the 

 schools by the concerted efforts of 

 the mothers of the pupils. The prob- 

 lem, as Mrs. Gamble expresses it, is 

 to carry more of the home into the 

 school and more of the school into 

 the home. The plan of action was 

 to invite the mothers of each school 

 district, " regardless of creed, color, 

 nationality, or environment," to 

 meet periodically once a month 

 for the discussion of " topics best 

 suited to aid in the proper develop- 

 ment of the child." The co-opera- 

 tion of the teachers of each district 

 was invoked, and the meetings were 

 as a rule held in the school house 

 after the regular school work for the 

 day was over. Each district league 

 conducted its proceedings in view of 

 the needs and peculiarities of the 

 I)articular neighborhood, but the 

 central union prepared a syllabus of 

 work for general use. In this sylla- 

 bus were suggested such topics as the 



