12 COLORADO COLLEGE STUDIES. 



The public school stands in close relationship to every 

 moral problem in the republic. The problem of municipal 

 government is pressing upon thoughtful citizens to-day, and 

 many schemes are devised to make it impossible for dishonest 

 politicians to practice their dishonesty and selfishness; but a 

 radical cure of this and all other evils in the body politic 

 can be effected only by the creation of upright citizens. A 

 majority of the voters receive their only training in the public 

 schools. If low and selfish aims rule their conduct; if they 

 lack the possibility of enthusiasm or a high purpose; if, in 

 short, their lives are wanting in principle, it is not enough 

 to say that demoralizing influences overthrow the good 

 wrought within the schools, because the business of the 

 schools is so to establish morality that it cannot be over- 

 thrown by evil circumstances in after life. For, as has already 

 been pointed out, the church and the home of the present day 

 are not able to perform this work, and therefore the schools, 

 because of the very idea which underlies their foundation 

 and secures their continued support, and because of the 

 amount of time which the child necessarily spends in them, 

 must be held largely responsible for the foundation of char- 

 acter; in other words, for the training of upright and patriotic 

 citizens. This, as has just been said, is their husiness. School 

 boards and teachers are needed who realize this imj)ortant 

 fact, and who are willing and able to make the development 

 of principle the central point in their work. 



No one who examines carefully the present political and 

 social order can fail to notice that there is a spirit of self- 

 seeking abroad that is destructive of the noblest virtues and 

 the highest ethical conditions; that vast numbers of citizens 

 are controlled by the passion for getting rather than for 

 giving. This is the dangerous element in the social problem. 

 It is the bane of that partisanship that is ever willing to 

 sacrifice the state for party supremacy; it is the moral 

 obliquity of the pauper and the criminal, who are ever seek- 

 ing to get something without rendering a fair and just equiva- 

 lent. Is the public school laying its foundation deep enough? 

 Has it struck its roots into the moral nature of these thirteen 



