must be a system in sympathetic relationship with the general management of the school, and should be under the same responsible control. Since it is an educational influence and so directly related to the success of the school, it ought to be a part of the school organization."
A paper was read by Dr. Helen C. Putnam of Providence, R. I., on "The Teaching of Hygiene for Better Parentage." She said:
"Life is a trust from fathers and mothers beginning before history; to be guarded and bettered in one's turn, and passed along to children's children. A definite conception of this trust is essential to right living. Educators are finding that well directed correlation of human life, with phenomena of growing things in school gardens and nature studies, develops a wholesome mental attitude. Since tens of millions of our population have only fractions of primary schooling, there is where the teaching must begin. These primary years are the time to lay foundations before a wrong bias is established.
"Education for parenthood cannot be completed at this early age. The strategic years for making it most effective are from sixteen to twenty-four, when home-making instincts are waking and strongest. We have 15,000,000 young people of these ages in no schools, and eligible for such instruction. All state boards of education were recently petitioned by the American Association for Study and Prevention of Infant Mortality to urge the appointment of commissions on continuation schools of home-making, to investigate conditions and needs in their respective states and to report plans for meeting them effectively through such continuation schools or classes."
Difficulty in Devising a Satisfactory Educational System.—It will be observed that each of these authoritative writers criticises the system of education now in vogue. The criticism is not, nor could it justly be, specialized. It is simply an expression, from different viewpoints, of the feeling that we are not doing ourselves justice as yet, we are groping after something better. It
may be, as I have previously stated, that no satisfactory system of education will be evolved until the laws of kindred sciences, which have organic relationship to what we understand as education, are fixed and better understood. We are just beginning to appreciate the true meaning of environment. We know little about heredity, but enough to appreciate its vital importance. Psychology is a realm of much hope, but we have only tasted of its surface promise and know little of the mysteries it may unfold. Eugenics, the infant giant of science, promises to establish the race on an enduring foundation. These sciences have laws which we do not yet understand; they relate to that part of human evolution which mind dominates. The quality of the mind's dominion depends upon the mind's education and environment, and since the laws of these sciences, upon which a perfect system of education depends, have not been revealed, it is quite evident that all past systems of education have been more or less deficient. It is further evident that evolution has suffered as a result of the mind's imperfect education,—a condition that is manifest all around us.
It must be appreciated, however, that we are discussing a large subject. If we understood all there is to know about environment; if we knew the laws of heredity, and psychology, and eugenics, and then could apply them, and educate the product of this combination of forces, we would be very near to the super-man. One must have a sober mental horizon to evolve the picture which would be the product of the above solution and then to estimate its meaning on human happiness and progress. We are approaching the ethics of right living,—of justice and truth,—the divine in man. At no time in the history of man has civilization been so near a solution of life's supreme problem as at the present moment.
Education is an important function in life's scheme, and while we may regret that it is not possible to formulate a system that would be perfect and capable of immediate application, we can continue to work patiently and hopefully, with assurance that in the near future the problem will be satisfactorily solved. When heredity,
psychology, and eugenics combine to dictate the system, we shall doubtless find, that, in the beginning, it will be a system of individualization. In the interest of health and of justice, and consequently of efficiency, this would seem to be the natural and the logical lead.
So long as human nature is as it is, we must meet conditions as they exist. We know as parents, and some of us know as physicians, that a task easily performed by one individual, without any apparent harmful results, will tax the capacity of another individual to the very utmost. Any educational system which does not recognize this law, is vicious. Yet such is the system in vogue to-day in America. We must adapt the burden to the endurance of the pupil. The administration of an educational machinery must solve this problem from the individual standpoint.