published that five millions of our people are illiteratescan not even read and write. Congress should be asked to decree that after 1925-giving fair warning-no one can vote for Senators and Congressman and Presidential electors who can not read. The States should take like action for State and local elections.

The dislike of school seen in so many American boys— immigrant boys who can go are more eager to do somust be cured as a foolish blunder. The joy there is in knowledge, and the value of it, and the shame of ignorance must be diligently shown by all friends of education. Let editors especially show how embarrassing it would be, even if one should get rich by some accident without much education, to have his ignorance set up on a pedestal. A quick-rich man went to Europe to "have his picture painted by Remnants or some other of the old masters." He found Venice in a "flood" and hurried on to drier

scenes.

Current Opinion, one of our most statesmanly magazine, in 1922 apparently proved from American draft statistics of the World War that more than half our American voters were then morons, below twelve years of age in mentality though above 21 in the mere lapse of time. No amount of teaching would pròbably make a moron a superman, but I doubt not they could be improved by more training of the right sort. (Elmire Reformatory quickens slow brains, almost incapable of study, by diet, baths, and gymnastics of ever increasing speed.)

Even those who are in schools for a time are not getting sufficient effective teaching in good citizenship. This is seen fundamentally in that nearly half those entitled to vote often neglect to vote, even after all the goading of a popular election campaign.

Minimum Tests in Schools of Knowledge Essential to Good Citizenship

PASTOR. The schools of every republic should insist that all who are to be future citizens shall be taught in the schools not "three rs" but eight: reading, writing, arithmetic, history, patriotism, reasoning, rhetoric and religion. No one can properly discharge the duties of an American citizen who has not had a good measure of education in all these. He should by compulsory education laws be required to go to school and stay until he can pass a minimum test of fitness for citizenship, which should include, ability to read a newspaper in English; to write a verse of some national air or an extract from the Constitution; to figure out some such problem as how much a deposit in a savings bank of 25 cents a day would amount to in ten years, compounded twice a year; to name at least five facts of American history for example, five great Presidents and something worthy that each of them said or did; to specify at least three duties of patriotism, such as voting, paying taxes honestly and cheerfully, and obeying the laws; to reason out some political fallacy, such as the false claims of "liberty" to violate laws that one dislikes; to express an argument for his own political views persuasively; and to state those fundamental principles of religion without which a citizen's oath would be worthless, and especially those non-sectarian principles of religion which have animated America's great statesmen and have been approved by the Supreme Court, which in a unanimous opinion on Feb. 26, 1892, said "This is a Christian nation."

Parents and pastors and literary clubs and civic bodies should help in making such citizenship examinations popular, and in preparing their children to pass not only

with credit but with honor; and the junior citizens thus shown to have made a good start in preparation for a good citizenship should be the centre of community rejoicings on the day they pass these examinations.

MAYOR. In history classes or in literary or social clubs there should be a course of "Studies in Patriotic Biographies" including at least Columbus, LaSalle, Washington, Hamilton, John Marshall, Jefferson, Franklin, Lincoln and Roosevelt. To make biographical studies profitable not only in promoting patriotism but also in personal improvement, the following words should be written or printed on a bookmark for each biography that is read, in order to bring the subjects up for discussion when a biography is reviewed in the reading circle: "Courtesy, Diligence, Diplomacy, Economy, Energy, Enterprise, Fortitude, Generosity, Honesty, Independence, Industry, Ingenuity, Integrity, Love of Nature, Loyalty, Native ability, Organizing ability, Originality, Patience, Persistence, Piety, Reliability, Self-reliance, Sincerity, Sympathy, System, Temperance, Thrift, Truthfulness." Page to be noted on which each virtue is shown.)

MOTHER. Vacation schools are being recognized as a necessity of life for the Summer in cities, and "city fathers" and other fathers should write for information about them to the U. S. Bureau of Education, Washington, D. C.1 These vacation schools can be made pleasanter than endless loafing through the long Summer vacation, and will help to keep up habits of study, and head off bad habits. Much time is given in these half day schools to kindergarten work for the babies, kitchengarden for the girls from ten to twelve years of age, and sloyd for both boys and girls. Street cleaning brigades

1 Also apply for "Lessons in Civics for Six Elementary Grades of City Schools," by Hannah M. Harris, and other documents on any aspect of education one desires to study.

are formed among the children-not that they are to go out and do the work of scavengers, but they are pledged not to throw paper or fruit peelings into the street, and to report the wrong use of streets and alleys by others depositing ashes or garbage. One boy, not over fourteen years of age, wore a star, having been regularly commissioned a street officer because of the 137 valid complaints he had presented to the city officers.

Throwing rubbish into streets and parks is a shocking exhibition of our national lack of a fine sense of courtesy, and we should cure it by a new rule of good form. More rubbish boxes at street corners would help to cure this form of bad manners.

TEACHER. That reminds me of a thoughtful suggestion by Henry Ford on his page of the Dearborn Independent, July 29, 1922:

"We may have to get entirely away from the notion that education consists only in book-work. We may even have to get away from the modern manual-training idea which has so much of the artificial about it. We may have to make a place for our boys in the industrial world -not an amateur place, not a manual-play place, not a charitable place, but such a place as they are entitled to in their character as our heirs and successors. Instead of work being the badge of a boy's poverty or his lack of opportunity, it ought to be made one of the marks of his freedom and one of the instruments of his develop

ment.

"Not only is education at a wrong angle, but so is industry. As boys, we don't like the school; as men, we sometimes don't like the shop. The school seems to cut us off from life as it is; and then the shop seems to cut us off from life as the school taught us to regard it. Necessity in both instances does what spontaneous desire ought to do. In both instances we have somehow lost connection with life as it is lived. To remedy this, to make work educational, and education workable, and to

keep both an integral part of a unified life, is a challenge to every lover of right conditions for mankind."

Exemplary work has been done in the Children's Aid Society schools of New York City, which were established by Charles Loring Brace. They are for children who could not attend public schools regularly because they must work a part of the day. Some of them take care of younger brothers and sisters while parents go to work, and so there are night schools as well as day schools. Mr. Brace, who was a student of social problems, which he discussed in his great book, "Gesta Christi," had the Balch System of primary instruction in civics introduced into his schools. It was important that the children should learn to read and write, but he felt it was no less important that they should be instructed how to become good citizens in the country to which they had come as aliens. It is claimed that Mr. Brace introduced the saluting of the flag by school children.

FATHER. There should be courses in civics in all of our graded public schools, beginning with little lessons for the youngest pupils. For this I suggest the "Patriotic Primer for the Little Citizen," by Wallace Foster (Indianapolis), and Mordan's "Patriotic Citizenship," which is for the older boys and girls. Neither of these books would be appropriate for use in the Sunday school, but it would not be difficult to arrange a course based upon God's dealings with nations, particularly with Israel, that could be advantageously used in the Sunday school. Prof. Amos Wells' little book on "Citizenship" for young people's societies is packed with wise and practicable suggestions useful for all citizens.

It is an encourageing sign that the mothers are aroused on the question of civics for children. Mrs. Kate Brown Sherwood said at the Tennessee Centennial: "We must