field of educational effort. Of course I do not suggest
this as a place for the airing of personal feelings, of petty details,
of minor matters, rather, an opportunity for discussing with and for an
intelligent and enquiring people great educational questions,
fundamental principles, and broad, humanitarian policies. All such
matters, because fundamental in the development of civilization and
because of universal interest, should and could be handled with frank
simplicity. Such a discussion, constructive in character, could not fail
of doing great good--of being very helpful to teachers and parents
alike.

Another suggestion that I want to make and an improvement that I am
going to urge touches very closely the matter of efficiency of systems
of education. Now, the efficiency of an educational institution or of a
system of schools is often mesured by the success of those completing
its course of study--of those profiting, to the full, by all that it
offers. That is the point of view taken by those people who so greatly
praise the work of the old district school of our boyhood days, "back
East." They point to this man and that one, men who have achieved
eminent success, whose only "schooling," perhaps, was received in the
"little red school house" and therefore claim that it was a great
institution for the making of men. But therein lurks a fallacy. Great
men have issued from the "little red school house," it is true, but they
became great not because of, but in spite of, the fact that the school
house was "little" and was "red." In pointing to such men as these, as
products, they forget the great silent multitude of boys and girls who
were in the same "little red school house" but who were never heard of
after they emerged. The pathetic feature of the old district school was
the great number of children who fell by the wayside. And so, to-day, no
educational institution should be rated as to efficiency by considering
the success merely of those completing its courses. To form a correct
estimate we must consider as well all those who entered and dropt out
before completion.

No system of schools is really efficient in which any considerable
percentage of the children drop out before completing the elementary
course of study. No system of schools is satisfactorily efficient which
is so managed as to require, or even allow, any considerable percentage
of the children to repeat grades, that is, to fail of promotion, makin