grades. In the Gary Schools and elsewhere
the making of things in the shops, the modelling of a Panama Canal, the
inspection of industries and governmental establishments, the
designing, building, and decoration of houses, the discussion and even
dramatization of the books read,--all are a logical and inevitable
continuation of the abstract knowledge of the schoolroom. The success of
the direct application of learning to industrial and professional
life may also be observed in such colleges as those at Cincinnati and
Schenectady, where young men spend half the time of the course in the
shops of manufacturing, corporations, often earning more than enough to
pay their tuition.

Children are not only prepared for democratic citizenship by being
encouraged to think for themselves, but also to govern and discipline
themselves. On the moral side, under the authoritative system of lay
and religious training, character was acquired at the expense of mental
flexibility--the Puritan method; our problem today, which the new system
undertakes, is to produce character with open-mindedness--the kind
of character possessed by many great scientists. Absorption in an
appropriate task creates a moral will, while science, knowledge, informs
the mind why a thing is "bad" or "good," disintegrating or upbuilding.
Moreover, these children are trained for democratic government by the
granting of autonomy. They have their own elected officials, their
own courts; their decisions are, of course, subject to reversal by the
principal, but in practice this seldom occurs.

The Gary Schools and many of the new schools are public schools. And the
principle of the new education that the state is primarily responsible
for the health of pupils--because an unsound body is apt to make an
unsound citizen of backward intelligence--is now being generally adopted
by public schools all over the country. This idea is essentially an
element of the democratic contention that all citizens must be given
an equality of opportunity--though all may not be created equal--now
becoming a positive rather than a negative right, guaranteed by the
state itself. An earnest attempt is thus made by the state to give
every citizen a fair start that in later years he may have no ground
for discontent or complaint. He stands on his own feet, he rises in
proportion to his ability and industry. Hence the program of the British
Labour Party rightly lays stress on education, on "freedo