is mere
guess-work at present.

Much pains has been expended in arguing that any system of vocational
training should locally be co-related with the industries of the
district. Vain effort! For it appears that the workers of all ages are
on the move all the time. Out of 22,027 thirteen-year-old boys in the
public schools of seventy-eight American cities, only 12,699, or a
little more than half, were living in the places of their birth. And
considering the _wanderlust_ of the young in any case, is anything
more probable than that the very first thing a big proportion of this
advancing body of "vocationally trained" young men and women will want
to do will be to try out their training in some other city? And why
should they not?

If there has ever been voiced a tenderer plea for a universal
education that shall pass by no child, boy or girl, than that of Stitt
Wilson, former Socialist Mayor of Berkeley, I do not know it. If there
has ever been outlined a finer ideal of an education fitting the
child, every child, to take his place and fill his place in the new
world opening before him, I have not heard of it. He asks that we
should submit ourselves to the leadership of the child--his needs, his
capacities, his ideal hungers--and in so doing we shall answer many
of the most disturbing and difficult problems that perplex our
twentieth-century civilization. Even in those states which make the
best attempt at educating their children, from three-fourths to
nine-tenths, according to the locality, leave the schools at the age
of thirteen or fourteen, and the present quality of the education
given from the age of twelve to sixteen is neither an enrichment in
culture, nor a training for life and livelihood. It is too brief for
culture, and is not intended for vocation.

Mr. Wilson makes no compromise with existing conditions; concedes not
one point to the second-rate standards that we supinely accept; faces
the question of cost, that basic difficulty which most theoretical
educators waive aside, and which the public never dreams of trying to
meet and overcome. Here are some of his proposals.

The New Education [he writes] will include training and experience
in domestic science, cookery and home-making; agriculture and
horticulture; pure and applied science, and mechanical and
commercial activities with actual production, distribution and
exchange of commodities. Such training for three to six millions