‘The principal need of our rural communities is such reform in the rural school as shall make it serve the needs of the people.’ So reports the celebrated Commission on Country Life whose work has recently been finished after sessions in thirty-five states and the examination of one hundred and thirty-five thousand reports.

Theodore Roosevelt has had time, too, to take a crack at our schools with his big stick—the stick well studded with hob nails of common honesty and common sense: ‘Our immediate purpose is to take the first steps in providing for the ninety-five per cent who are not now trained for a vocation advantages corresponding to those enjoyed by the relative few who are trained in the professional and technical schools.’ And again, ‘The school system should be aimed primarily to fit the student for actual life rather than for a university.’

These are but samples of the expressions of discontent which have marked with increasing frequency the popular no less than the professional literature of the last few years. But all these complaints by individuals of high or low degree are mere punctuation marks to the real indictment—that sweeping indictment against the worth of our system which is joined in by thousands of parents whose lack of faith leads them to let their children quit school; and by those hundreds of thousands of children, half educated or uneducated by the standard of our meager, traditional requirements, who drop by the way each year. With better school equipment on every hand, with prosperity enabling parents to keep their children in school, with tempting sops of comfort in the shape of manual training, polytechnic courses, commercial branches, domestic science, ‘agriculture’ and what not, with compulsory education laws, and with policemen detailed to haul in erring sons of promise by the scruff of their necks; in spite of all this the fact remains that in California four children out of five never finish the grammar schools. And of those boys who do finish the grammar schools and have the hardihood to begin the high school, seventy per cent drop out before graduation.

Skeptical souls may find diversion and relief in grave quibbling as to the accuracy of these figures. Some optimists, indeed, aver that fully twenty-five per cent of our children graduate from the grammar schools; and that not less than five per cent complete the high school. But the matter has long since passed the place when anyone needs figures in order to catch the point. It is common knowledge that our eighth grades are hopelessly shrunken when compared with the lower grades. It is common knowledge, too, that graduation classes of ten or twelve are the rule in high schools of one hundred to one hundred and fifty pupils; that the upper classes in such schools resemble in marked degree the classes in a young ladies’ seminary.

To start with, what is wrong with the curriculum of our elementary schools? In the first place, we lack a definite, tangible, common-sense conception of the purposes of these schools. We have called them the ‘people’s birthright,’ ‘the bulwark of our institutions,’ ‘the training ground for citizenship;’ all of which does great justice to our feelings without conveying any lasting peace to our minds. Is there not some fundamental idea which stands as the educational basis for this first stage in our educational scheme? Is there not some distinguishing mark by which we may know to a certainty the end for which such schools are designed? If so, it will not be hard to judge the value of our present product and to appraise for its real worth each element now included in, or seeking, admission into, the curriculum of those schools.

We speak of our elementary schools as our common schools. Do we mean by this that they are numerous and well distributed? Surely there is something more significant in the adjective than mere indication of number. Do we mean then that they are common in the sense that eggs are spoken of in market reports as common? That they are inferior, unworthy of confidence or of low relative value? By no means this, for of all the branches of our educational system they are the most cherished and respected. We speak of some of our great men as having had but a common school education and feel that we have dignified the men and the school by such association. They are called common, not because they are numerous, or of little worth. They are common in a far more significant sense than this, for they deal with the common or general educational needs of the whole people. That is to say, they deal, or should deal, with those elements of education which are of prime value to all individuals of our society. It is their function to give to all the children of the nation those elementary adjustments to the demands of life required in common of us all.

Let us see what this means. There are some things which are essential parts of the education of every American. Whatever his occupation, environment, creed or special needs may be, there are common staples of education which he must have, or be unprepared to meet the general demands which membership in civilized society lays upon him. A horseshoer as a horseshoer, a factory hand as such, or a minister in his ministerial capacity needs to know little or no arithmetic. But men in the common relations of life, each of these has frequent need of it. A lawyer may interpret the law and a cobbler may cobble with skill, and still know nothing about geography. But as men, each is expected to attain at least to the standard of common sense in that subject which is set by intelligent people in the world about him. So it is in spelling, reading, writing, the use of language, history and science. There is a general human need for such intelligence in all of these as will give its possessor his proper place in the social unit of which he is a member. Without this intelligence one would be an alien to his race and times; a barbarian, an outlander, out of touch in a thousand ways with the needs of life.

This fundamental piece of work, therefore, our elementary schools should do: they should give to the children of the nation eight full years’ worth of that knowledge, culture and emotional discipline required of all intelligent adults by the common demands of civilized life. Here is the training that lies at the root of all social integration. Our common business relations, our standards of appreciation of literature, the play, the nation’s past, of morals and manners depend largely upon it. It is the basis for intelligent contact with the world through speech, writing or action. It is at the foundation of nationalism. It is the cement binding the heterogenous elements of society into a true social structure.

This function of the elementary schools to distribute the education of common or general usefulness is no theoretical deduction. It is implied in the framework of the system under which such schools are established and operated. These schools are devised for all the children of the land and voluntary attendance is often supplemented by compulsory education laws. Their arrangement by grades and the scope of their courses of study are practically uniform, and this implies that what they give is of first value to all. From all external signs it would seem clear that they have been designed to distribute to each child his share in the race heritage of common intelligence.

This would seem to be so simple as to be axiomatic: the whole content of a course of study intended for all, and so far as possible given to all, must be useful to all. It must supply all comers with things of essential value to each. Now, if it should be found that the course of study of our common schools has in it matter clearly only of special value to special classes of individuals, or of value near the vanishing point to any class of individuals, or, on the other hand, if it should appear that it has left out matter of primary value to all, then to just that degree it has failed to meet the ends for which it has been devised. In such case no amount of generous equipment on the part of the public, and no extenuating theorizing or resolution of good will on our part, can set the affair right. The worth of our system of common schools, and the answer which must be made to the rising storm of criticism which confronts it, both depend upon the results of one simple test; do these schools give to the children of the nation an education of which all parts are of fundamental value to all who receive it?

First, as to the tool subjects. Reading, writing and the use of the mother tongue are, of course, a fundamental part of our necessary common equipment. Most people use them in their vocations; all people have need of them in the common relations of everyday life. On the whole they are well provided for in our elementary schools. Such defects as may be found in our treatment of them arise partly from imperfections in methods—especially in the work in language where systematic drills have not yet taken their proper place—and partly from the encroachments made upon them by useless surplusage in other subjects.

Arithmetic, in the light of common needs, is in a less satisfactory state. Greater familiarity in handling the problems arising in the daily