of the social institutions and utilities
which are the gift of former and contemporary generations of toilers.

But how can the schoolboy come into the self-respect of partnership?
Probably by building up the consciousness of "our school" and by being
sent from home with the idea of helping teacher and school in every way
to accomplish the most and best for all concerned. Ordinarily the home
supplies the child with no such suggestion and in some cases works even
counter to the school and against good citizenship. The teacher is added
to the ranks of the child's natural enemies, where unfortunately the
policeman has long since been consigned; and the school?--that is
something for which he carries no responsibility. Actual experiment of
the opposite kind has proved most gratifying, and this immediate
attitude toward his first public institution sets the child's will
toward the practice of good citizenship in the years that lie ahead.

The curriculum of the elementary schools of Chicago makes a very
thorough attempt to train the child in good citizenship, an attempt
beginning with the anniversary days of the kindergarten and proceeding
throughout the eight grades. In addition to history, civics of the most
concrete and immediate kind is so presented that the child should be
brought to an appreciation of the city's institutions and organized
forces and of the common responsibility for the health and security of
all the people. The same policy is pursued, unfortunately with
diminishing attention, throughout the high-school course, and yet the
superintendent of schools testifies that public education is failing to
secure civic virtue. The children have not come into partnership with
the school and other agencies of the common life, they have not achieved
a nice sense of the rights of others, they have not been lifted to the
ideal of service as being more noble than that of efficiency alone.

Of course there are many reasons for this: the quizzical temper of the
community at large, the constant revelation of graft, the distorted
school discipline which makes tardiness a more serious offense than
lying or theft; the neglect to organize athletics and play for ethical
ends; the criminal's code with regard to examinations--a code very
prevalent in secondary schools, both public and private--that cheating
is in order if one is not caught; the bitter and damaging personalities
of party politics and the very transient honors of Ame