ublic schools up to the right
standard, but to create new kinds of schools that are badly needed, the
plan suggested by Dr. Eliot would take another billion or two. He
advocates kindergartens and further development of the new subjects that
have recently been added to the grammar school course; he opposes the
specialization of the studies of children for their life work before the
sixteenth or seventeenth year, favors complete development of the high
school as well as the manual training, mechanics, art, the evening and
the vacation schools, greater attention to physical education and
development, and, finally, the greatest possible extension and
development of our institutions of higher education. He also advocates
newer reforms, such as the employment of skilled physicians in
connection with the schools, the opening of public spaces, country
parks, beaches, city squares, gardens, or parkways for the instruction
of school children. He specifies in detail the improvements that are
needed in school buildings, shows what is urgently demanded and is
immediately practicable in the way of increasing the number of teachers,
paying them better and giving them pensions, indicates the needed
improvements in the administration of the school systems, urges the
development of departmental instruction through several grades, and the
addition of manual training to all the public schools along with a
better instruction in music and drawing.

There are still other improvements in education which have already been
tested and found to produce the most valuable results. Perhaps the most
important ones besides those demanded by Dr. Eliot are the providing of
free or cheap lunches for undernourished children, and the system,
already widespread in England and the other countries, of furnishing
scholarships to carry the brighter children of the impecunious classes
through the college, high school, and technical courses. Even this
policy of scholarships would lead us to full democracy in education only
if by its means the child of the poorest individual had exactly the same
opportunities as those of the richest. _It is not enough that a few
children only should be so advanced; but that of impecunious children,
who constitute 90 per cent of the population, a sufficient number should
be advanced to fill 90 per cent of those positions, in industry,
government, and society, which require a higher education._

There is no doubt that this actual eq