66 ILLINOIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCE 
in public school education, if those tendencies are truly repre- 
sented by the shifting enrollment in high-school subjects and by 
the provisions of the Smith-Hughes Act, are based upon a mis- 
conception of the real immediate appreciation and the ultimate 
needs of the masses. 
To me it is unbelievable that the primary function of the 
public high school is to start our boys and girls at the age of 
fourteen upon a strictly vocational training. [ can not bring 
myself to believe that boys and girls of that age are ready for 
any kind of specialization in education. I believe that at least 
the first two years of high-school training should be devoted 
chiefly to the acquisiton of knowledge concerning their social, 
economic and natural environment. If democracy is to survive 
is it not evident that to the largest possible extent a common 
pabulum of environmental understanding is essential? The 
very hope of democracy rests upon the possession by the 
masses of a common pabulum of understanding. Surely we are 
not ready to concede that the capacity to earn ones living is a 
sufficient qualification to assure good citizenship in a free 
democracy; the possession of superior skill in a certain trade 
is no guarantee of good citizenship. I cannot believe that the 
American people are ready to cast aside the long cherished 
conviction that general education, general enlightenment is the 
foundation and bulwark of real democracy. 
If narrow vocational education of the type indicated by the 
provisions of the Smith-Hughes Act shall become the prevailing 
type of our public school education there will practically be no 
place in the high-school curriculum for physics or for any other 
special science. The cultural element of science, the historical 
element of science, the general enlightenment of science—all 
these elements of a scientific education must go. The common 
pabulum of knowledge concerning our natural and physical 
environment must go. The Spencerian idea of science as a 
foundation for all solid and substantial education must go. 
Social solidarity will go. Society will tend more strongly 
towards stratification for we shall then be turning out from 
our high schools a body of specialized wage earners lacking 
social conscience and social coherence. Can democracy survive 
such a condition? 
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