ning free, rational, and worthy. It is not
secured by a change of sentiment regarding the dignity of labor, and
the superiority of a life of service to that of an aloof self-sufficing
independence. Important as these theoretical and emotional changes
are, their importance consists in their being turned to account in the
development of a truly democratic society, a society in which all share
in useful service and all enjoy a worthy leisure. It is not a mere
change in the concepts of culture--or a liberal mind--and social service
which requires an educational reorganization; but the educational
transformation is needed to give full and explicit effect to the
changes implied in social life. The increased political and economic
emancipation of the "masses" has shown itself in education; it has
effected the development of a common school system of education, public
and free. It has destroyed the idea that learning is properly a monopoly
of the few who are predestined by nature to govern social affairs. But
the revolution is still incomplete. The idea still prevails that a truly
cultural or liberal education cannot have anything in common, directly
at least, with industrial affairs, and that the education which is fit
for the masses must be a useful or practical education in a sense which
opposes useful and practical to nurture of appreciation and liberation
of thought. As a consequence, our actual system is an inconsistent
mixture. Certain studies and methods are retained on the supposition
that they have the sanction of peculiar liberality, the chief content
of the term liberal being uselessness for practical ends. This aspect
is chiefly visible in what is termed the higher education--that of the
college and of preparation for it. But is has filtered through into
elementary education and largely controls its processes and aims. But,
on the other hand, certain concessions have been made to the masses
who must engage in getting a livelihood and to the increased role of
economic activities in modern life. These concessions are exhibited in
special schools and courses for the professions, for engineering, for
manual training and commerce, in vocational and prevocational courses;
and in the spirit in which certain elementary subjects, like the three
R's, are taught. The result is a system in which both "cultural" and
"utilitarian" subjects exist in an inorganic composite where the former
are not by dominant purpose socially servic