ke
courage, redouble our efforts, and all that, but should not need to
start all over again.

How shall we account for the illiteracy revealed among both alien and
native born? Not by faulty methods of teaching can it be explained, nor
by anything else that teachers have done or have not done. Illiterates
have not attended the schools. It is due either to insufficient
legislation or to non-enforcement of laws, doubtless more the latter
save in the case of adult aliens.

From the very beginning of our colonial life, early in the 17th century,
universal education has been a part of both our educational and our
governmental creeds. A program of compulsory education was early found
necessary, early adopted, and never abandoned. Beginning in
Massachusetts and going south and west, following considerably behind
but then keeping almost even pace with settlement and development after
statehood had come, legislation has decreed that every child born into
the land or coming into it by immigration shall enjoy the advantages of
education, at least to the extent of knowing how to read and write the
English language. Every state in the Union has compulsory attendance
laws upon its statute books. These laws are not as thorogoing as they
should be in many cases but yet, even as they are, if enforced, they
should leave almost no illiteracy among people whose childhood has been
spent in this country. For the least satisfactory laws--those of some of
the Southern states, Georgia, for example, require school attendance for
at least four months of each year between the ages of eight and
fourteen. But illiteracy, even among our own people, has been
revealed--too much of it. The laws have not been enforced. There is the
sore spot. Why have they not been enforced? But of that later.

The education of adult aliens is another matter, and a very different
one. As a problem it is almost new. That is, it has been only in
relatively recent years that it has been recognized as such. True, for
several years some of the states most largely affected, such as
Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and others have been
wrestling with it, but not very much has yet been attempted toward
introducing the compulsory features. And private agencies,
philanthropic, industrial, religious, political, and others have also
done good work. But all that had thus far been done had accomplisht
little more, at the outbreak of the war, than to open our eyes