American flag. The school has often been called the melting-pot, in
which the many nationalities are fused; but it is far more than that.
True, somehow and somewhere in the school process these elements have
been made to coalesce, but that is not the only change that is wrought.
The volume of life that issues from the school is the same as that which
enters, barring the leakage, but the resultant stream is far more potent
in life-giving properties because of its passage through the school.

=Changes wrought.=--When we see the stream entering the filtration-plant
polluted with impurities and then coming forth clear and wholesome, we
know that something happened to that stream in transit. Similarly, when
we see the stream of life entering the school as a mere aggregation of
more or less discordant elements and then coming forth in a virtually
unified homogeny, we know that something has happened to that stream in
its progress through the school. To determine just what happens in
either case is a task for experts and a task, moreover, that is well
worth while. In either case we may well inquire whether the things that
happen are the very best things that could possibly be made to happen;
and, if not, what improvements are possible and desirable.

=Another misconception.=--The analogy between the plant and the school
will not hold if we still retain in the parlance of school procedure the
expression "getting an education." The act of getting implies material
substance. Education is not a substance but a process, and it is
palpably impossible to get a process. So there can be no such thing as
getting an education, in spite of the tenacity of the expression. Even
to state the fact would seem altogether trite, were we not confronted
every day with the fact that teachers and parents are either unable or
unwilling to substitute some right expression for this wrong one.
Education is not the process of getting but, rather, the process of
becoming, and the difference is as wide as the difference between the
true and the false.

Just how long it will require to eradicate this conception from the
school and society no one can well conjecture. Its presence in our
nomenclature reveals, in a marked way, the strength of habit. Many
teachers will give willing assent to the fact and then use the
expression again in their next sentence. Certainly we shall not even
apprehend the true function and procedure of the vitalized school until
we