boy of to-day to visualize his own grandson, in the years to come, pointing the finger of scorn at him and calling down maledictions upon him because of a taint in the family blood, that picture will persist in his consciousness, and will prove a deterrent factor in his life. The desire for immortality is innate in every human breast, we are taught, but certainly no boy will wish to achieve that sort of immortality. He will not consider with complacency the possibility of his becoming a pariah in the estimation of his descendants, and will go far in an effort to avert such a misfortune. There is no man but will shudder when he contemplates the possibility of having perpetuated upon his gravestone or in the memory of his grandchild the word “Unclean.”

The heart of the problem.—Here we arrive at the very heart of the problem that confronts the home and the school. We may close our eyes, or look another way, but the problem remains. We may not be able to solve it, but we cannot evade it. Each day it calls loudly to every parent and every teacher for a solution. The health and happiness of the coming generations depend upon the right education of the present one, and this responsibility the home and the school can neither shirk nor shift. We take great unction to ourselves for the excellence of the horses, pigs, and cattle that we have on exhibition at the fairs, but are silent as to our failures in the form of children, that drag out a half-life in our hospitals. In one state it costs more to care for the defectives and unfortunates than to provide schooling facilities for all the normal children, but this fact is not written into party platforms nor proclaimed from the stump. In the face of such a fact society seems to proceed upon the agreeable assumption that the less said the better.

Misconceptions.—We temporize with the fundamental situation by the use of such soporifics as the expressions “necessary evil” and the like, but that leaves us exactly at the starting point. Many well-meaning people use these expressions with great frequency and freedom and seem to think that in so doing they have given a proof of virtue and public spirit. It were worthy only of an iconoclast to deprecate or disparage the legislative attempts to foster clean living. All such efforts are worthy of commendation; but in sadness it must be confessed that, laudable as these efforts are, they have not produced results that are wholly satisfactory. Defectives are still granted licenses to perpetuate their kind; children still enervate their bodies and minds by the use of narcotics; and society daintily lifts its skirts as it hurries past the evil, pretending not to see. Legislation is an attempt to express public sentiment in statutory form; but public sentiment must precede legislation if it is to become effective. Efforts have been made through the process of legislation to deny the granting of marriage licenses to people who are physically unsound, but the efforts came to naught because public sentiment has not attained to this plane of thinking. Hence, we shall not have much help from legislation in solving our problem, until public sentiment has been educated.

The responsibility of the school.—This education must come, in large part, through the schools, but even these will fail until they come into a full realization of the fact that their field of effort is life in the large. Time was when the teacher thought she was employed to teach geography, grammar, and arithmetic. Then she enlarged this to include boys and girls. And now she needs to make another addition and realize that her function is to teach boys and girls the subject of Life, using the branches of study as a means to this end. In a report on the work of the schools at Gary, Indiana, the statement is made that the first purpose of these schools seems to be to produce efficient workers for the mills. This seems to savor of the doctrine of educational foreordination, and would make millwork and life synonymous. Life is larger than any mill. We may be justified in educating one horse for the plow and another for the race track, but this justification rests upon the fact that horses are assets and not liabilities.

Clean living.—Clean living in this generation will, undeniably, project itself into the next, and we have only to see to it that all the activities of the school function in clean living in the child of to-day, and we shall surely be safeguarding the interests of the child of the future. But clean living means more than mere externals. The daily bath, pure food, fresh air, and sanitary conditions are essential but not sufficient in themselves. Clean thinking, right motives, and a high respect for the rights and interests of the future must enter into the scheme of life. There must be no devious ways, no back alleys, in the scheme, but only the broad highway of life, open always to the sunlight and to the gaze of all mankind. All this must become thoroughly enmeshed in the social consciousness and in the daily practice of every individual, before the school can lay claim to success in the art of teaching efficient living.

Questions and Exercises

1. Investigate the following agencies as means for providing future generations with ancestors of untainted blood: legislation; moral education; physical education; sex hygiene and eugenics; penal institutions; medical science.
2. Enumerate some of the physical and mental handicaps of the child who is not well born.
3. What powerful appeal for clean living may be made to the adolescent youth?
4. As a concrete example of children being punished for the sins of their fathers even unto the third and fourth generation, read the history of the Juke family.
5. To what extent does the school share the responsibility for the improvement of the physical and moral quality of the children of the future?
6. What kind of teaching is needed to meet this responsibility?
7. Reliable authorities have estimated that 60 per cent or 12,000,000 of the school children of America are suffering from removable physical defects; that 93 per cent of the school children of the country have defective teeth; and that on the average the health of children who are not in attendance at school is better than that of those who are in school. In the light of these facts discuss the failure or success of our schools in providing fit material for efficient citizenship.

CHAPTER V

THE TEACHER-POLITICIAN

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The politician defined.—The politician has been defined as one who makes a careful study of the wants of his community and is diligent in his efforts to supply these wants. This definition has, at the very least, the merit of mitigating, if not removing, the stigma that attaches to politicians in the popular thought. Conceding the correctness of this definition, it must be evident that society is the beneficiary of the work of the politician, and would be the gainer if the number of politicians were multiplied. The motive of self-interest lies back of all human activities, and education is constantly striving to stimulate and accentuate this motive. Even in altruism we may find an admixture of self-interest. The merchant who arranges his goods