n done in the
first two. Too many unimportant and unrelated facts are taught. It is
like the wearying orator who reels off stories only to amuse, seems
incapable of choosing an incident to enforce a point, and makes no
progress toward a logical conclusion.

"When but one-third of the children remain to the end of the elementary
course, there is something the matter with the schools. When half of the
men who are responsible for the business activities and who are guiding
the political life of the country tell us that children from the
elementary schools are not able to do definite things required in the
world's real affairs, there is something the matter with the schools.
When work seeks workers, and young men and women are indifferent to it
or do not know how to do it, there is something the matter with the
schools.[2]

"There is a waste of time and productivity in all of the grades of the
elementary schools."[3] "The things that are weighing down the schools
are the multiplicity of studies which are only informatory, the
prolongation of branches so as to require many text-books, and the
prolixity of treatment and illustration that will accommodate
psychological theory and sustain pedagogical methods which have some
basis of reason, but which have been most ingeniously overdone."[4]

Former United States Commissioner of Education, E. E. Brown, is
responsible for the statement that,--"With all that we have done to
secure regular and continuous attendance at school, it is still a mark
of distinction when any city is able to keep even one-half of the pupils
who are enrolled in its schools until they have passed even the seventh
grade."[5]

Here is an illustration, from the pen of a widely known educational
expert, of the character of educational facilities in the well-to-do
suburb of an Eastern city. After describing two of the newer schools
(1911) Prof. Hanus continues,--"The Maple Avenue School is too small for
its school population, without a suitable office for the principal or a
common room for the teachers, and, of course, very inadequately equipped
for the work it ought to do; it ought, therefore, to be remodeled and
added to without delay. The Chestnut Street School is old, gloomy,
crowded, badly ventilated, and badly heated, has steep and narrow
stairways, and it would be dangerous in case of fire. There are fire
escapes, to be sure, but the access to some of these, though apparently
easy in a fire drill, mig