ial goods, and in the conversion of them into
higher values and in their conservation. We looked carefully to some
of these activities as a war measure. It is hardly less necessary in
times of peace. We should teach these things, not simply because the
practice of them is educational, but because the practice of them is
useful, and is a necessary service, on the part of every individual,
to the world. Adding to the world's store of goods and consciousness
of the need of doing this directly or indirectly should be regarded as
a fundamental duty and habit. To establish both the habit and the
sense of duty, we may suppose, a stage is necessary in which the
individual's contribution shall be direct and tangible. Hence the
value of those educational activities that deal with foods and their
conservation.

On a little higher plane, and in a little different way we can apply
the same thoughts to the whole cycle of material things. The
distribution of wealth is of course in part a technical and a
theoretical problem. It is also a practical and a general one. All at
least ought to be judges of the waste that now goes on in the
industrial life because the "middleman" has occupied such a place of
vantage in the economic order. In teaching occupation and in all
preparation for vocation ought we not to take this into consideration?
Occupations that are purely distributive and which involve a great
waste of human energies and of materials have been unduly emphasized,
at least by default of more positive preparation, by the school.
Because they are easy and untechnical and have a little elegance about
them, in some cases, they fit in very well with the generality and
bookishness and detachment from real life that the school sometimes
represents.

The occupations that are more creative, both in the field of material
things and of ideas, have, relatively speaking, been neglected.
Inventiveness especially seems to be a quality that we have supposed
to be a gift of the gods, and we have given but little attention to
producing it, or even giving it an opportunity to display itself. Have
we not gained from the war new impressions both about the powers of
the human mind in producing new thoughts and in controlling both
material and psychic forces, and also about the necessity for
developing originality and independence? Is it too much to expect now
that greater ingenuity be displayed in education itself to the end of
producing more origin