lous efficiency of Germany is due in large part to the fact that
her great middle classes have been made efficient through a national system
of trade schools.

The prosperity and perpetuity of a nation rests largely upon its ability to
provide an adequate number of highly trained experts to be leaders,
inventors and executives. In a democracy, these skilled leaders are
especially important. Among the problems to be solved are questions of
government, education, finance, economics, business, industry, health,
manufacturing, engineering and mining. Any nation that lacks guidance in
these particulars is indeed weak and pitiful. The universities, colleges,
and higher technical schools supply nine-tenths of these experts, yet in
the U.S. to-day there are only 250,000 students enrolled in all the
colleges and universities of the country; this is about one to 500 of the
population, a number entirely inadequate to perform the tremendous service
that will be expected of this nation in the near future.

LESSON XXI

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. State the nature of the school.

2. How did the ideal of universal education arise?

3. State the chief function of the school.

4. Name the habits and ideals peculiar to the school.

5. What is the secondary purpose of the school?

6. Contrast the efficiency of the home and the school.

7. What high compliment may be paid to teachers?

8. Is the comparison made between the home and the school overdrawn?

9. Compare the practical school of to-day with the school of the past.

10. Do you favor uniform dress for high school girls?

11. What is your opinion of modern style which so many mothers foster?

12. Have you any boys taking industrial work in school?

13. Prove that high school education pays.

14. What is the duty of a nation towards its great middle class?

15. Do you believe in a national system of industrial and vocational
schools?

16. Why are experts needed particularly in a democracy?

THE DUTY OF THE STATE

_The Social and Civic Institutions of the State (Society) Exert a Powerful
Influence over the Lives of Children. The Citizen Must See to It that this
Great Educative Influence of His Community Is Uplifting in Nature_

The vital relationship existing between parent and child is easy to
understand, but the close interdependence of the individual and the state
is much more difficult to comprehend. Yet in a very real sense the
individual a