ic agencies of
education. The new social "mores" accepted by the majority and
supported by law and court may be directly opposed to the inherited
ideal of right living of large numbers of people in any given
locality, especially in the United States with our large immigrant
population.

To have education so much a public concern seems to many to so
minimize the mother's share in it that she is placed in the same
general relation as the father to what was once her special duty.
Ideally, both parents are equally bound to decide all questions
concerning the formal education of their children within the limits of
personal choice made possible by the public provisions of which all
parents may now take advantage. In some favored families this really
occurs. Actually, however, in most families the mother has more
leisure to learn of possible opportunities, to influence possible
improvement, and, above all, to help to wise individual choice in the
use by the family of these socially provided educational facilities
than has the father. She is also now more likely to belong to
associations or clubs or classes for adult study in which educational
problems are discussed than is he, and often more intimately
acquainted with children's desires or needs in education.

=Women's Relation to Educational Agencies.=--A glance at the list of
national and local associations for the study and application of
educational science and art will show the vast majority of women over
men (in the United States at least) who are trying to find out what
real education in modern life should be and how to secure that best
training for their own children and for the children of all. The
educational obligation is, therefore, not taken from the average
mother's duty; it has changed its form only and often is the more
difficult to meet successfully because of the high specialization of
the teachers and the confusion of the school direction. No one would
claim that fathers, if loyal and worthy, are less anxious than mothers
for the trailing of their children toward successful living. The fact,
however, that most mothers stand nearest to the lives of the children
make them most often the necessary purveyors of educational
opportunities from the public provision to private use.

=The Social Value of Parental Affection.=--Below and within all other
gifts to humanity which have come by the way of motherhood's devotion
to child-life is that selective and partia